Adventures in Innovation

INSIDE THE RISE AND FALL OF NORTEL

R&D was the genesis that launched Northern Electric from the sleepy Canadian branch plant to a publicly traded company with a market cap of more than $300B, $30B in sales, and 100,000 employees worldwide. The lessons learned from my Nortel experience... “Innovate or Die“

By John F. Tyson

12 - The Power of Purple

"We're playing in a world that we take for granted; ‘innovating’ within a sandbox that was built 30 years ago. Nortel invented the digital world of communications in the 70s, a fibre optic world in the 80s, and created the first fully integrated smart phone in the 90s. … At its peak, Nortel’s valuation represented more than a third of the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX). This was a direct result of incredible people accomplishing extraordinary things and should also serve as a wake-up call to the value of innovation and intellectual capital."