Senior Telecom Executives Should Look to the Future and the Past

The broadband and telecom industry innovates as technology evolves. In just the last half-decade, we have seen the rise of machine learning, augmented and virtual reality, the Internet of Things, 5G, smart cities, ubiquitous media streaming, and more. These emerging technologies and trends pose challenges and present opportunities.

To avoid the pitfalls and take advantage of the opportunities of a constantly changing technological landscape, telecom businesses recruit senior executives with expertise in emerging technologies. Their profound knowledge of technology and its potential applications allows telecom businesses to bring new products to the market and gain a first-mover advantage over their competitors. At the very least, forward-looking executives help telecom businesses to avoid being left behind.

But there’s more to effective decision-making than predicting the next big thing. Understanding the history of the industry and its markets is just as important. A lack of historical context is as likely to lead to ill-advised ventures as a lack of focus on the future.

The most effective technology executives factor the past and the future into their thinking. An executive with a profound knowledge of technology needs to be able to contextualize that knowledge. They must be able to consider technologies in the light of historical data, information about market behavior, and previous less-than-successful products. The list of products that seemed to embrace the zeitgeist but failed to make an impact is long.

Looking Forward and Back

The most desirable telecom executives are those with a firm grasp of the history of the industry and its infrastructure combined with a focus on emerging technology, societal trends, and their potential impact on the evolution of the telecom market.

Evidence shows that executives who can consciously represent their thought processes as either forward-looking or backward-looking have a more effective grasp of the decision space. As Giovanni Gavetti and Daniel Levinthal reported in Administrative Science Quarterly: “Changing a cognitive representation itself can act as an important mode of adaptation, effectively resulting in the sequential allocation of attention to different facets of the environment.”

Executives who look exclusively to the future neglect factors from recent history. As the cliché goes: those who don’t learn from history are condemned to repeat it. But, executives who are too focused on the past, who neglect the changing landscape and focus their decision-making entirely on observed trends and historic data, tend to be conservative decision-makers. They may fail to notice the—possibly revolutionary—importance of new technologies and trends. No company wants to be the next Kodak.

Looking Beyond Technology

It is undeniable that technology shapes the future of the cable and broadband industry. Telecom businesses that don’t have a firm grasp of upcoming opportunities are unlikely to flourish. But telecoms businesses who see themselves as mere providers of connectivity and closely related services are just as likely to fall behind. 

As Forbes Insights recently pointed out, 20 of the world’s telecoms businesses declined in the Forbes Global 2000 list. One causal factor is a lack of strategy where emerging technologies are concerned. Telecoms businesses may understand the technology, but lack the strategic ability to transform it into innovative products and services that create profitable new markets.

Just as it is vital that telecoms executives have technological expertise, they must be able to leverage those technologies to create opportunities in the wider market. Telecoms businesses should cultivate the talents of leaders who have the insight, imagination,  and customer-centered thinking necessary to fuel new products and services.

So far, we have discussed the external manifestations of forward and backward-looking telecoms business strategy, but organizations rarely succeed in new and evolving markets without overhauling internal processes. Businesses tend to develop entrenched internal processes that reflect past successes. They find it challenging to break out of established patterns. 

Lawrence Capron, professor of strategy at INSEAD, says that “companies … become good at executing a specific mode and so they repeat and repeat and repeat even in contexts and under conditions which might not be suitable.” 

What practical consequences does this have for telecom businesses looking to recruit senior technical executives? The focus of recruiting should not be exclusively on technical expertise. Efforts should be made to ensure that key decision-makers have the necessary industry and market knowledge to contextualize their thinking.  

Beyond that, executive recruitment strategy should recognize the need for executives with the leadership talent to implement internal transformations. Executives must be ready and able to overturn outdated assumptions and reshape internal processes.