Rita Gunther McGrath News

"To be sure, there is a capitalistic, not an altruistic, element behind all the interest in the standards-setting. "Those who favor interoperable standards are those who sell hardware -- or those who can conceive of Web-based services reaching ever-broader customer sets because their connections are more reliable, or exist at all," Rita Gunther McGrath, an associate professor at Columbia Business School at Columbia University in New York, told Wireless World.

Not everyone in the industry, however, wants or accepts the standards that are being promoted, she observed. "Resistance, such as it is, comes from those who would like to embed their intellectual property in a part of the platform in some way, and thus benefit from the growth of WiMax-enabled networks," said McGrath, who is also co-author of "MarketBusters: 40 Strategic Moves that Drive Exceptional Business Growth."

"So you'll see these folks holding out for specifications that favor their technologies in some way."

The "holy grail" for these companies would be to have their technology, whatever it may be, become as universal in the WiMax platform as Qualcomm's technology is in mobile-phone CDMA devices. The idea for companies would be to "be able to collect transactional revenue from the IP held there," said McGrath.

This is what McGrath laconically labels the "enduring dilemma" of new technology "ecosystems."

To register and read the United Press International article Wireless World: New roaming standard? click here.

Posted: Saturday, January 21, 2006

Another way to hit on a great idea: Take note of the obvious problems you encounter in everyday life. Not enough people allow an idea to permeate their psyche, even if it's staring them in the face. Keep a pad of paper and a pen in your shirt pocket, your purse or on your bedside table. Or start a pile of index cards with ideas written on them. Periodically throw away the ones that don't cut it, and hang on to those that might be before their time, says Rita McGrath, author of MarketBusters: 40 Strategic Moves That Drive Exceptional Business Growth.

To read the Flip the Switch article at Entrepreneur.com, click here.

Posted: Saturday, January 21, 2006

Professors Rita McGrath of Columbia and Jay Akridge of Purdue co-authored an article on the application of MarketBusters in agriculture for the December 2005 edition of Seed World. To read the article, click here.

Posted: Friday, January 20, 2006

The January 2006 Alaska Airlines In-Flight magazine quotes Rita in an article entitled Outside the Box: Speakers from other industries give meetings a fresh perspective.

To read the entire article, Download file

Posted: Thursday, January 19, 2006

Rita McGrath was quoted in American Airlines' American Way magazine in an Myth Busters: Truth or Consequences. To read the entire article. To read the article, click here.