Anytime, Anywhere: Entrepreneurship and the Creation of a Wireless World

by Louis Galambos , Eric John Abrahamson

• ISBN13: 9780521816168
• ISBN10: 0521816165
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-06-10
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Wireless entrepreneurs are transforming the way people live and work around the globe. In the process they have created some of the fastest growing companies on the planet. This book tells the story of the birth and explosion of cellular and wireless communications as seen through the eyes of one of the industry's pioneers, Sam Ginn. As deregulation and privatization swept the globe, Ginn and his team at Air Touch Communications fought for and won licenses on several continents. They built an amazingly successful business using strategic partnerships and joint ventures. In the process they demonstrated a new model for global entrepreneurship in a high-tech, information-based economy. The combination of Air Touch with Vodafone in 1999, and Vodafone with Mannesmann in Europe in 2000 has created the largest wireless business in the world. Vodafone also formed a joint venture with Bell Atlantic to create the largest wireless company in America.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
The Race	1	(11)
Bell-heads	12	(11)
Birth of a Wireless World	23	(11)
Innovation amid Regulatory Chaos	34	(7)
California Miseries	41	(11)
Can They Be Entrepreneurs?	52	(10)
First Mover	62	(14)
Breaking with the Past	76	(5)
Innocents Abroad	81	(14)
Crisis at Home	95	(101)
Margaret Thatcher's Revolution	101	(7)
Deconstructing Culture while Reconstructing Leadership	108	(5)
A Digital Home Run	113	(17)
The Topaz Solution	130	(11)
Riptides of Reform	141	(9)
AirTouch	150	(9)
Competition from New Quarters	159	(15)
Battling Systems	174	(9)
The Wireless Explosion	183	(12)
Globalism Realized?	195	(5)
A Surprising Long-Distance Call	200	(14)
Bidding for the Future of a Wireless World	214	(7)
The Meld	221	(12)
A Global Powerhouse	233	(13)
The Wireless World	246	(17)
Notes	263	(38)
Index	301