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The fourth Harvard Business School Colloquium on the Computer and Telecommunications industries, held at Harvard University in the spring of 2003, brought together some of the best minds in academia, government, and private industry to discuss one thing: broadband, and the implications of its growth for business, society, and innovation. After the implosion of the Internet dot.coms in the early 2000s and while software companies, telcos, and the general economy struggled to recover, broadband was quietly making significant gains worldwide, fuelling speculation about the next "killer apps" that might emerge, who would become the leaders in the new markets it would create, and what would be the effect on world politics and economics. The thinkers at the event included Eric Schmidt, CEO of GOOGLE, Harvard professor and author Clayton Christensen, and NTT DoCoMo's Takeshi Natsuno, who talked about the possibility of genuine, real-time communication and rich media technologies to brought together to create a form of interactivity only dreamed about before.

In this stimulating audio interview, Tom Parish speaks with conference co-chairs Stephen Bradley and Robert Austin, who co-edited the subsequent book from the proceedings, The Broadband Explosion; their conversation touches on topics from the global race for broadband leadership, the disruptive possibilities posed by WiFi, security challenges, and what kind of innovation might be driven by all that processing power.

Resources

The Broadband Explosion: Thinking About a Truly Interactive World

Harvard Business Review Online: The Broadband Explosion

Bio

Prof. Stephen Bradley is the William Ziegler Professor of Business Administration and teaches Competitive and Corporate Strategy in the Advanced Management Program at the Harvard Business School.

Robert Austin is an Associate Professor of the Harvard Business School, where he chairs the executive program for Chief Information Officers (CIOs) and other IT executives.

Production Credits

Dana Farver, Executive Producer, Communities Editor-in-Chief
Tom Parish, Audio Producer, Show Host
Kimberly Stone, Web Development Manager
Scott Ebner, Web Developer