June 8, 2022, Always Creating Value™ Podcast with Marty Cooper
SEASON 1, EPISODE 10, Author of CUTTING THE CORD: The Cell Phone Has Transformed HUMANITY, an Amazon #1 bestseller: Marty Cooper
Martin Cooper is an engineer, inventor, entrepreneur, and futurist. He is known as the “father of the cell phone.”
https://estowemanagement.com/marty-cooper-cutting-the-cord/
Marty led the creation of the world’s first cell phone at Motorola—and made the first public call on it. Over nearly three decades at Motorola, Cooper contributed to the development of pagers, two-way radio dispatch systems, quartz crystal manufacture, and more.
A serial entrepreneur, he and his wife, Arlene Harris, have cofounded numerous wireless technology companies. This includes Cellular Business Systems, SOS Wireless Communications, GreatCall, and ArrayComm. Cooper is currently chairman of Dyna LLC and a member of the FCC’s Technological Advisory Council. He was the first to observe the Law of Spectrum Capacity, which became known as Cooper’s Law.
In 2013, Cooper became a member of the National Academy of Engineering from whom he received the Charles Stark Draper Prize for Engineering. He was awarded the Marconi Prize “for being a wireless visionary who reshaped the concept of mobile communication.” He has been inducted into the Consumer Electronics Hall of Fame and Wireless History Foundation’s Wireless Hall of Fame. The Radio Club of America awarded him a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010. He is a lifetime member of the IEEE, was president of its Vehicular Technology Society and received its Centennial Medal. In 2007, Time magazine named him one of the “100 Best Inventors in History.” He is a Prince of Asturias Laureate.
Marty Cooper grew up in Chicago, the son of Ukrainian immigrants. He attended Crane Technical High School and the Illinois Institute of Technology, where he is a Life Trustee. He served in the US Navy as a submarine officer during the Korean Conflict.
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Episode Transcript
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Unknown (00:16):
Welcome to always creating values podcasts. This
is June 8. This is our 10thepisode since are starting the
podcast back in September. Andwe've had nothing but wonderful
guests. It's a real joy to dothis, this program, I've learned
(00:37):
so much, and I get anopportunity to test out the
things that I've learned, Ilearned as well. Today we have
Marty Cooper, Marty invented thethe handheld, first handheld
cell phone. And we'll talk alittle bit about more about who
he is. But let's talk a littlebit about the podcast. The
podcast is designed to focus onindividuals who, as part of
(01:02):
their their career or their lifeare consistently focused on what
can they do next. In most cases,in a positive perspective,
whether it's in their businessesor personal life, we've chosen
always to look at people whohave been very successful so
that we can help peopleunderstand that they too can can
(01:23):
be more successful if they paymore attention to what they can
do, and not what they can't do.
And on a consistent on aconsistent basis. I'm Mark
Fowler, and I'm the CEO of stoneManagement Corporation in the
CEO, revolutionaryconversations, LLC. My business
revolves around helpingbusinesses go from where they
(01:43):
are until where they need to beor they want to be or what they
can be. And as that processworks, it can be either a crisis
situation or a growth situation.
In most cases, our focus hasalways been on tapping into the
potential of the individuals inthe company and the team and
what they've done and maybe whatthey've not done in order to
(02:05):
help them go to another level ofcreativity on a consistent
basis. And historically, it's,it's been very, very, very
successful, because we're, we'retapping into the positive
aspects. It's not that we don'tlook at the, you know, what's
wrong, but we need to focus onwhat's right and what we can do
about it. And that's part ofwhat we talked about today and
(02:26):
the next month, and and what theother other episodes also talked
about, which is, what can we do,what can we do? What can we do
about that? So I hope you'lljoin us in next July, July. I
think it's the 13th. We aregoing to have a panel with three
(02:46):
individuals from the technologyarena to talk about pretty much
the same thing. How do we how dowe take what we've created, and
and tie it to the humancondition and to the future for
a much more collaborative,collaborative world. My guest
today is Marty Cooper. He's wellknown for having invented at
(03:10):
Bell Labs. And I he'll talkabout the fact that this was a
big team. This was big teameffort for him, and his his crew
and as great stories about whatit's like to be part of a team
to creating all kinds of newdifferent kinds of technology.
And I'm going to first ask Martyto talk a little bit about his
(03:33):
career, and how he he's alwaysconsistently adding value to his
process and to those around him,Marty?
Well, thank you for having me,Mark. It's a pleasure to be
here. That's a huge request,you're just there to talk about
myself, because I hate to talkabout myself. I like to talk
(03:55):
about what goes out in theworld, what other people are
doing. But, uh, but I am anengineer. More importantly, I'm
an optimist. But my optimism isevidence based. Because I
believe and and I have seen theevidence that the world is
(04:19):
better off now than it has everbeen before.
Pardon, including your cellphone. For the people live
longer, they're healthier,they're richer, and there's no
reason to believe that the worldcan't continue to get better and
better. And that will onlyhappen if we all of us
(04:42):
contribute to that. The thereare lots of things going on.
That seemed to be negative. Thatseemed to be inhibiting the
growth. I think we recover sorryabout that. All these things,
but they take a very positiveattitude, and a belief that
(05:08):
things can get better and willget better. Another aspect of
it, you want in life isobjectivity. You cannot let
emotion carry away, you have tolook at the evidence and look at
life, in real terms. A lot ofpeople do get carried away by
(05:30):
their emotions, as they decidewhat they want to believe and
operate on that beliefindependent of whether it makes
any sense or not. And that'sdestructive. And I've learned
over the years analyzingyourself, and, and establishing
(05:51):
goals for yourself that arerealistic, and and are
meaningful, instead of emotionaland just aspirations is, is
really important.
How has that helped? How hasthat helped you in your own
development? I mean, you know,you were the leader on that
(06:11):
team. And for the the hand, thefirst handheld cell phone, cell
phone. How did that help you winin that development, and a
little bit about, you know, alittle bit about what that's
like to, to be on the cuttingedge and the excitement that
goes along with developingsomething like that?
(06:33):
Well, it's very exciting, youknow, you could use your
imagination, and let your mindmove freely into the future. I
tell people that I know a lotabout the future because I spend
more time in the future thanmost other people do. The other
people call that daydreaming. Icall that using your imagination
(06:56):
constructively. But, but I'vebeen very fortunate that most of
the luckiest thing that everhappened to me was joining
Motorola, which identity wasactually my second job. After I
left the Navy, my first job wasworking for the Bell system at a
company called teletype, whichdoesn't exist any longer. And
(07:20):
it's a good example of peoplegetting caught up in technology,
and forgetting the fact thattechnology is the application of
science, to create products andservices that make people's
lives better. So I hope you gotthe the important part of that
one is technology is nothingwithout the people part of it.
(07:44):
And yet, so much of my life isinvolved. I'm on a FCC
committee, you know about thefederal communications system
manages all of the radiospectrum and communications in
general in this country, theyestablished the rules and, and
(08:05):
are the vanities, events,segment of our society. And
there are so many people on thiscommittee that are caught up in
the technology. And to them, thetechnology is everything. And
they don't even think about thepeople part. And that's just
when I can give you an exampleof that. When people talk about
(08:30):
5g, all of you know about 5g. Wethink we do ya? Well, whenever
you know, it's probably wrong,where I know, you've got caught
up in the emotions of the salespitch of the carriers. Because
they're really two importantthings for people with regard to
(08:53):
cell phones. First of all, canyou make a call wherever you
are, we call that coverage? Andthe second thing is, can you
afford it? And those are thethings that we have somehow lost
sight of in this with advancedtechnology that we have today.
(09:14):
There are still many parts ofthis country that don't have
coverage where people can't talkenough. Could you imagine that?
You know, you cannot get aneducation today without having a
cell phone and cut and servicefull time. And yet, half of our
students do not have that forone reason or another. And the
(09:35):
two reasons are they really havecoverage. You go into rural
areas, and there are many ruralareas that have no self gotten
cell phone coverage at all. Andthere are many students
throughout the country who justcan't afford the service. When
cellular started in thiscountry, we had the lowest cost
cellular service in the world.
Now we now have among thehighest costs. And part of that
(09:57):
is because the carriers haveforgotten that the people are
the people are the ones thatthey are serving now, they see a
future called the Internet ofThings where they are going to
use wireless coverage, tocontrol all kinds of things in
(10:17):
our life. They talk aboutdriverless cars. They talk about
doctors doing operations usingvirtual reality. Well, I'm not
going to have a doctor operateon me with virtual reality. I'll
tell you that right now. Butthey've forgotten the fact that
(10:38):
the important things, thingslike education, things like
health care, those are thingsthat have to be developed now.
And people that don't have thoseservices today, are they can I
get negative benefit in the mostadvanced technologies. And so
(10:59):
that's a battle that I am goingthrough continuously now. Trying
to persuade my colleagues andthe FCC Advisory Council, that
the Internet of Things is justfine. I believe that, but should
we finish the internet of peoplefirst, and then go on to the
(11:20):
internet of things.
You know, it's kind ofinteresting. You know, Devon
Blaine, your, your PR person whowas actually our first, our
first guest, suggested you, thenwe jumped at it, at the
(11:42):
opportunity. And, you know, mybusiness is all about people.
You know, there's all kinds oftechnology, and there's systems
and corporate finance, and allkinds of different things that
go on in a business,manufacturing, and whatever. But
you got to pay attention to thepeople. And when I decided to do
(12:03):
our pre interview, I was sosurprised that when we were
going through it, that you wereso focused on the needs of the
human, I thought maybe, youknow, you were very focused,
like we see a lot of nowadays,people just focusing on the next
bells and whistle, bell andwhistle that a piece of
(12:24):
technology can can do. from acreative perspective. You know,
a lot of times, especially inmanufacturing people over
engineer something, they justkeep over engineering and over
engineering it. And oftentimes,we see a lot of software that
has so many things that nobodycan do, I guess it's trying to,
(12:48):
you know, reach out to a biggermarket. But how do you how do
you relate to that, overengineering? As a relationship
today? And what creative thingsmight we do to to marginalize
that a bit or not marginalizeit, but turn it into something
more more productive?
Well, the cell phone is a verygood example of that. Because
(13:11):
one of the things that I havedone from the beginning is, you
know, I want to stay connected,and hard to stay connected if
you're not part of acorporation, and I am not, no,
I'm in Finland. And so I havealways had the latest cell
phone, which you say, Well,isn't that nice? That I'm
staying connected? Well, whathas happened is that I never
(13:33):
really catch up to the, with thelatest technology is because I,
every time I get to do cellphone, I have to start to learn
it all over again. People haveforgotten this issue of
technology. They talked abouttechnology being intuitive.
Technology should not beintuitive, it should be
invisible. The technology oughtto be there helping you allowing
(13:59):
you to do things moreeffectively than you would
otherwise. And the besttechnology is not even
noticeable. It's they're helpingyou. But you don't have to think
about it. The cell phone is justthe opposite of that. They tell
you well, you know, the cellphone is extension of you. Well,
I happen to believe that whilethey say the way you're going to
(14:19):
make this thing and etc, is ifyou're going to pick the apps
that serve you most effectively.
Oh, that's wonderful. Now youhave to go and select among 2
million apps. If you have aniPhone, or or two or 3 million
apps, if you've got an Androidphone and decide which ones are
right for you. And that'sridiculous. So I have a vision
(14:41):
of what the future cell phonewould look like. And that cell
phone is your cell phone. It'sbark, Fowler's cell phone, it's
extension of your personality,and it's got an artificial
intelligence built into it. Thatis constantly out. analyzing
your habits, your performance,the way you would like to do
(15:04):
things. And it will either findan app that serves you properly.
Or if it doesn't have one ofthose 2 billion apps, it will
create one. But the wholepurpose of this cell phone is to
make your life better, not to bemore complicated, not to provide
you with all kinds of options.
(15:29):
It is to make your life moreeffective, and more comfortable.
And so when I see the cellphone, evolving to is as a
personal instrument, everyperson cell phone will be
different today, others, it'scertainly not going to be as, as
you mentioned, to be early inour conversation, and this flat
(15:51):
piece of plastic held up againsta curved head in this
uncomfortable position. It'sgoing to be optimal in
everything it does. And so byexample of optimal and optimal
cell phone that whose purpose istalking to other people is a
(16:15):
device it's perhaps a anearring, baby, it's actually
embedded under your skin. Andit's a powerful computer that
you talk to and you say, give meMark Fowler, Lee phone. And this
computer's gonna say to me,which Mark filer Do you want.
(16:36):
You want the guy that used to bethe chairman of the FCC, or he
want this guy that's working onconversations. And I said, Give
me the conversation mark. Andnext to get oh, we're talking.
And I have to not have to thinkabout technology, in any sense
at all can be. That's theultimate example
you're talking about and muchmore interactive, as opposed to
(16:57):
following their rules. You'refollowing your rules.
You got it, you got it. Theseengineers make things so they
say oh, it's obvious. All youhave to remember that in order
to do this. And then they got alist of things that you got to
remember. And that's totallycounterintuitive. You should not
have to remember everything, youshould do things in a natural
(17:20):
way, the way you would doanything else. If you think of
something as it could express itin words, it will or inactions,
this artificial intelligencewill figure it out, and make
your life easier for you. Andthat's what technology you ought
to do. So this, the future cellphone is going to be distributed
(17:40):
throughout your body. It's goingto have sensors, it's going to
be analyzing your the yourmetrics, things like your blood
pressure, and other aspects ofyour health. And actually,
interpreting those things. Anddeciding whether you may be
(18:04):
getting suckered on and out isin future of medicine, instead
of treating waiting for you toget sick, and then trying to
cure you of that sickness. Andwhy not anticipate the sickness,
measure the things that aregoing on in your body? And when
you're sick, this starts tohappen, zap it and stop it.
(18:27):
That's there is a potentialdoing that as well. Totally
eliminating disease. To me,that's a People objective. Not
one of just having anothergadget. That I mean,
let me let me you know, this isvery expensive, and that what
you're saying is very expensive.
But it also ends up being multi,many multi dimensional in the
(18:53):
sense that you're talking abouthealth, you're talking about
maybe finance, you're talkingabout remembering all the things
you have to remember there's alldifferent variables that fit
into there. How How, how are thecell phone business connected in
that way? I mean, they've triedto do it through those apps, but
how would they do it in a biggerway they would have to connect
(19:16):
with a variety of differentother technologies or
capabilities.
Well, of course, there's anawful lot of work that has to be
done in America. And one exampleis for education. Our whole
education system today, in mostplaces is backwards. The way
(19:42):
people learn things. It's notbeing lectured to. It's by
solving problems. Don't youagree with that? I would learn
as you're faced with a problemyou have to solve the problem.
You have with have experience soif you've learned the tools that
you need. And then you've got tosolve these problems. Well,
(20:04):
somebody has to create anenvironment where you can do
that. You can't do this withoutbeing connected all the time.
And that's why you have aconviction that the future of
education is every student isgoing to be connected 24/7. And
that doesn't mean that they'retotally engrossed in their cell
(20:26):
phone, but they are learning allthe time. And anytime they want
to get a piece of information,they can go to their cell phone.
And when they go to school, theyare being presented with
problems that they have tosolve. Somebody has to create
this environment. And so there'san awful lot of work that has to
(20:46):
be done. But of course, that'sthat's what we engineers are for
work. We, we have to anticipatewhat the deeds of people and
come up with solutions to thosedeeds.
Well, let's let's flashback toBell Labs. You know, like, like
I mentioned, your, your conceptsof today for the future are
(21:11):
pretty expansive, and kind ofmore than cutting edge to back
then that you have any idea thiswas on your plate for this, you
know, did you have futuristic,almost science fiction, like
ideas about what you arecreating and what it could be?
Of course, by the way, I was atMotorola, I think you were very
(21:36):
much aware of that. My enemy atthat time was was in fact, Bell
Labs, and the Bell System. Andbecause the Bell system then was
a monopoly. Their principal wasthey work in a society, decide
what our future was, and tell uswhat our future is going to be.
And you become a marketing guy,Paramount everything else, you
(22:01):
know that the way you domarketing is you find out what
people need, and what they wantand respond to those needs. Not
you're not the one that tellsthem what they need. But getting
off the track. Yes, we did havea vision of what the future was
going to be. We knew thatsomeday everybody would have a
(22:23):
cell phone. They the story thatwe told was that someday when
you were born, you'd be assigneda phone number. If you didn't
answer the phone, you died. Youif you think about it, we're
almost there. Now. There aremore cell phones, more mobile
phones in the world today and inour people. That's true in
(22:46):
almost every country in theworld, in fact, in their
emerging countries, there hardlyhave any word phones left
anymore. And the amount of Wiredphones in this country is going
down, down down. So we knew thatthat was going to happen. Did we
know that there was going to bea supercomputer in every phone?
Not really, what we demonstratedthe very first cell phone in New
(23:12):
York in 1973, that there were nopersonal computers, there were
no digital cameras, as theinternet did not exist. So did
we anticipate that all of thosethings would be embraced in the
single little gadget, you couldhold your hand, not a chance.
But we did know that this wasgoing to be pervasive that
(23:33):
everybody was going to have thisthing. And that our lives that
we are going to be changed andchanged for the better. And the
reason we knew that at Motorolais that we were in the
communications business. And wewere making two way radios for a
police department and forbusinesses. And the only
function of these things was tomake the businesses and the
(23:57):
police departments operate moreefficiently. And so when the
bell system came along and said,well, the future of
communications is going to becar phones. And we said all
we've gone way beyond that. Thephone is a an extension of the
(24:18):
person. You only spend a fewpercent of your time in the car,
just the phone is gonna bethere, making your life better
all the time. And we had abattle with the Bell System that
went on for 12 years where theywere promoting powerful, they
never gave up on it even whenthey first offered the service.
(24:42):
Their their first offering waspowerful loads are made
measurement life was to come upwith a device that was an
extension of people, people'spersonalities. And the very
first Over the weekend was infact, a personal handheld phone.
(25:06):
That was a 1983. It took 10years from the demonstration of
the first cell phone to win thefirst commercial phone curve.
And even then, at the beginning,most of the foods people bought
were car foods. Yeah, Ihad one that was I liked it was
right there.
(25:28):
Yeah, except that you were inyour car all the time. And when
you were not in your car, youhad no communications. So those
were really primitive days wherethey are.
Let's, let's, let's, let's tapin a little bit about, you know,
we talked about your creativity.
And, you know, you were talkingabout the, in your younger days
(25:50):
used to read a lot and used tohave some more time on your
hands. And that you might havethat this is where you're able
to tap into that vision thatyou're talking about. I'm
looking forward, you know, youknow, for other people to be
thinking about how they beginyoung, at a young age to begin
(26:12):
to appreciate their owncreativity. Any thoughts for you
about the you can share abouthow you found special time and
how you used it. I know, I wassick as a kid quite a bit. And I
ended up reading a lot. Probablywell ahead of what I said. But
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it was very stimulatingreception for me to tell people
how they should become creativeor how they should conduct their
lives. I know how it happened tome, my folks were serial
entrepreneurs, they had a numberof failures before they finally
(26:53):
came up with a business that'sthat serve them well for the
rest of their life. And so Ispent a lot of time alone. And
that's where I evolved. What Ibelieve was vivid imagination. I
think I've mentioned to youbefore that the reason I know so
(27:16):
much about the future is that Ispent so much time there. People
say that's unrealistic, I don'tthink so as you as long as you
stick, you realize that you dolive in a real world. And at
times, you have to go back andearn a living. But having an
imagination is very important.
(27:40):
But I have to tell you aboutthat every person that is alive
today is different than everyother person that is alive. And
not only that every person alivetoday is different than any
person who has ever lived andever will for the foreseeable
future. So how can you presumeto tell any one individual how
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they should conduct their lives?
They should?
Well, I was just tapping intowhat you do that might stimulate
something for them.
While you have to be optimisticI did, I think you haven't
figured that out quite how I'mthe optimist of the world. My
wife has found that my wife is amuch better executive than I am.
(28:24):
Because if you think about it,if you're running a company, the
one thing you do not want tohave is a guy who is totally
optimistic running a company,you want to have somebody that's
anticipating all the bad thingsthat can happen. While I'm not
very good at this,hopefully all the good things
too, you know? Well, that'sright,
you have to have a combinationof aspiring that to make your
(28:48):
company grow and be better, andto offer new services. But you
also have to be aware thatthings can't go wrong. And that
you have to be responsive tothat. I've I have been in roles
of running companies. Before, Iwould say that being an optimist
(29:10):
has not served me very well. Inthose roles. You have to have a
balance between optimism andrealism.
Well, one of the other thingsyou said was, you know, a real
jewel, or, excuse me, a realjewel for me. Was the
conversation about what are someof the qualities that
(29:33):
individuals need to be creativeor you've experienced them and
either yourself or others and Ithink one of them was kind of
the the first first one out ofthe box was humility. And I
think that tied to the fact thatwe can't know it all. We can't
be the ones that you know, beall and end all if you've got a
(29:54):
project you've you've got toembrace others.
Well, that's right, there is abalance there as well. VARK.
First of all, arrogance does notserve anybody well, at all. So
you have to realize that there'sno way any individual can know
everything. But you do have tohave confidence in yourself, you
(30:17):
have to have confidence to knowthat when you run into a
difficulty, and you always willrun into difficulties, that you
can learn how to overcome thatdifficulty, that there are
tools, that there are ways ofsolving these things. So you
have to have confidence inyourself. But there's a big
(30:38):
difference between confidenceand their arrogance. And I think
utility is extraordinarilyimportant. Of course, I'm even
one thing I say is that I amhumble, I'm fat, I'm more humble
than anybody else. But I thinkhumanity is more an expression
(31:02):
of a realistic view of what lifeis, there is nobody that knows
everything. There's nobody thatcan solve every problem. You
just have to realize that youare more capable than you
realize that you are that youshould not be afraid of taking
on challenges, you should notbe. And I must tell you, this is
(31:24):
the most important thing that Iever learned. When I joined
Motorola. Let me start overagain. One of the most important
things that I ever learned waswhen I joined Motorola, the
advice that we got from thefounder of the company was, do
(31:48):
not fear failure, reach out. Andthat's company practice that
I've had numerous failures whenI was at Motorola. But they
recognized that they I hadsuccesses, that I had the
ability to solve problems, andthey tolerated by failures, and
(32:08):
allowed me to proceeded hadenough successes, that that I
had a very successful career atMotorola. So this concept of
humility, along with confidence,the balance between those two is
crucial for somebody that wantsto make a contribution to, to
(32:32):
science to life, to engineeringto whatever they're doing. Yeah,
it's,you know, a lot of the world
today is they're always lookingfor the answer, as opposed to,
like you said, trying to figureit out yourself. You know, one
of the things that I find thatit's kind of a double edged
(32:53):
sword that our friend James wastalking about earlier, before
the meeting was a, there's thegood and the bad. And one of the
things that that I think is goodis that there's lots of
information. On the other hand,a lot of that information can be
half right. All right, notright. And we don't challenge,
(33:18):
we just assume that informationbecause it's in the book of
internet, that, that it, thatit's correct. And I can act upon
it as opposed to challenging.
And at the same time, beinghumble enough to talk to
somebody else or verify, do yourdue diligence about something as
(33:41):
opposed to just react?
You're 100%, right, whereeducation never ever stops you.
And of course, for me, that'sthe most exciting thing in their
life. Like, I learned stuffevery day. But part of education
is accepting the fact that youcan be wrong. And the the
(34:03):
importance of being able to say,you know, I didn't know that. I
thought that, that I was wrong.
And I've learned something new,is it's hard for people to do,
you don't want to have spent alot of time learning something
and then to have to unlearn itand learn something new. It's
not an easy task. And yet, it'svery important in the
(34:25):
educational process. If you wantto
know what one of the more simplethings we've learned during
COVID was to to be more like tohave a zoning, you know, we're
all all very comfortable meetingwith people in person. And now
we don't meet with people atthat much we do, obviously
meeting more, but it's acompletely different protocol.
(34:48):
You have to pick up things,nuances in the conversation that
you didn't have to pick up. Whenyou were when you were in a
conversation, a real one rightthere in front of in front of
each other. So we've had a callcorrect our learning just how we
deal with people. Now, it'scombination of zoom and nuts.
You know,that's a very important comment.
(35:08):
A zoom call is not the same as aperson to person call, right.
And anybody that thinks that thecase is totally mistaken, which
means you've got to startlearning all over again, right?
There's an interesting thingabout learning, I'm sorry that I
keep getting distracted. Butit's your day. But it turns out
(35:31):
that learning is not a naturalthing. You have to go out of
your way to learn something. Andif you decide that you'd know
everything, and you don't haveto learn, and this is it, this
is not something that I justmade up. The scientists have
actually done studies, if youstop learning, if you are
(35:52):
satisfied with what you are andwhat you know, and you don't
believe you have to learnthings, you lose the ability to
learn, if that's the scariestthing, and I could think of that
you could get into a situationwhere you don't know everything,
and you can't learn even if youwant to, oh, that is so scary to
(36:14):
me. I just, I just can't imagineit. And yet, many, many people
go through life doing that, theyget to a stage of life, where
they think they are verysatisfied with everything
they've done. They go out andplay golf, they could do their
job, the same job that they'vedone before, with a lot of
(36:34):
learning anything new, and theyforget, they lose the ability to
learn. And as I said before,that's the scariest thing I can
imagine. And yet, I think mostof our people in our society do
this.
Well, it's gotten easier andeasier, because we're told,
we're told a lot about what weshould do, as opposed to what we
(36:57):
could. But you know, there weresix other items, and I'm going
to go through them and I thinkhumility, which is what was the
first concept that came out ofyour, your brain and your mouth,
on our pre interview. The otherones were, I'm gonna just gonna
go through all six of them. openmindedness likes to learn,
(37:21):
you're just talking about thelearning, aspect, enthusiasm.
good sense of humor, and thewhich goes along with humility.
Because if you don't have a goodsense of humor, when things go
wrong, you know, you're you'regonna hurt yourself badly, like
(37:42):
people. And then finally, thevalue of collaboration. And as I
was going back through ourtranscript from our last
meeting, you tied humility andvalue of collaboration sort of
together. But I see humility isto falls into all every one of
those. In other words, it's kindof a base, you really can't be
(38:05):
so open minded unless you have acertain amount of humility.
Okay, you know, okay, this iswhat I need to learn, okay, that
kind of stuff. Andyou can't laugh at yourself. If
you're humble, right?
That's right. You can't, youcan't. It's and you do have to
laugh at yourself? You. I wouldimagine, I know, for me, God
(38:25):
can't imagine how many timesI've actually had to laugh at
myself. And you probably too,you said that. Motorola was very
benevolent as it related to thethings that, that that didn't
work, but, you know, keepplugging away till it works.
Yeah. So of those, what would beI would imagine the value of
(38:46):
collaboration, and how do youtap into a lot of people? And I
would think that cell phone hassome of that some of the reason
because you can go to the cellphone to get some information,
as opposed to calling somebodythat might have the nuances of a
particular thing that they needto know. You know, how do you
(39:07):
help people tap into it? How doyou help people tap into the
collaborative need? Besides thefact that you're, you know,
you're one of the, you're thelead collaborator, but you know,
sometimes people don't even knowwhat collaboration is. So
you bet. Well, it'll go back towhat collaboration was in the
(39:30):
old days. And they think about,who was one of the most
important collaboration,collaborators in history. It was
Albert Einstein. And when AlbertEinstein had an idea, he would
think about it aloud. He'd writeit down. And then he sent a
letter to Niels Bohr or one ofthe other geniuses that he was
(39:50):
talking to. And that letterwould take a couple of weeks to
go through the mail in Europe,and then the other guy would
think about it for a while andsort of back. So that was what
collaboration was 100 years ago.
Today, you would I could sithere and exchange ideas as we do
that, virtually instantaneously.
(40:18):
The future of collaboration isthat we can be together, solving
a problem and actually workingon the problem in real time. So
if we're just to pick aridiculous example, if you and I
are trying to design anautomobile engine, we could
actually be a virtual reality,do exactly what we're doing
(40:40):
here. But taking this engineapart, and putting it together
with different parts, and tryingout new new ideas, and all that
could be happeninginstantaneously. So the idea
that two people could createmore than twice the productivity
(41:02):
that a single person had. And ifyou think about it, that's going
to solve the biggest problem inthe world today, which is
poverty, is there any reason whyanybody should be poor when we
have so much capability toproduce that so the whole
concept of virtual realityaugmented reality, I think the
(41:26):
future of those technologies is,in fact, improving
collaboration, and eliminatingthe whole thought of not only
poverty, but anybody having lessthan anybody else out there, or
there is the possibility in along range future, that money
(41:47):
becomes valueless, that it'sexperience is important, but
anybody can have anything theywant. Because we are so
productive, that we could offerthat to everybody. So I think I
give you an example of how anoctopus thinks work. But I'm
serious about that. I believethat that oh, that can happen.
(42:07):
And if the tools for making thathappen are all evident today,
the virtual reality is just oneof them. But collaboration is
absolutely crucial. And youcan't collaborate unless we have
people collaborating. So long.
As you keep telling me over andover again, it all comes back to
the same thing about peopleworking together. And with the
(42:30):
right attitude.
Yeah, well, the right attitudeis, you know, as opposed Yeah,
it's got to stay within thecollaborative, collaborative. I
don't want to use the wordentity but dynamic or energy,
you know, when it starts to be,well, now I can run off and do
(42:51):
this, as opposed to, what can Ido for the team, what kind of
you know, it's part of part ofthe whole process, meaning
making sure that you're addingvalue to not only the project,
but to the team, as well asyourself. But a lot of people
and you and I have all seenthat, that people get together
(43:11):
in a collaborative environment.
And all of a sudden, they say,Well, that's an idea I really
need. And I want to run off anddo it on our own, which, you
know, just diminishes thecollaboration that that was, you
know, that was built?
Well, I have to tell you about,you do stimulate great ideas
(43:32):
that the team that I hadtogether with an extraordinary
group, but I actually took over20 people to create that very
first cell phone. And every oneof those engineers was smarter
in their field that I was, theyknew more about it. And if I
wasn't humble enough to acceptthat I could never put that team
(43:53):
together. Guess I had the dream.
I had the vision. But I had tocommunicate that vision to all
these guys. But without a wholebunch of people who are smarter
than I was, this sample couldnever happen to the first place.
(44:14):
It's almost a rule of thumb fora leader to come to grips with
the fact that they have to hirepeople that know more about
something that they than theydo. And that is one of the
hardest things an entrepreneurdeals with is having taken care
of everything and everything andeverything from washing the
dishes to going out andmarketing, you know, that all of
(44:36):
a sudden, in order to growthere, they've got to reach out
to like you said, people whoknow more.
I haven't figured out how ElonMusk exhibits humility, but
somehow there must be theresomewhere.
I shake my head so it's not it'soutside my it's outside my
(44:58):
bandwidth. Me too. If I know youdon't want to give advice, but
if I look at these six, sevencharacteristics that we talked
about, which was starting withhumility, like you said, You've
(45:19):
got to be able to understandthat there are others that know
more than you do, and thatyou're gonna make mistakes. And
you need to be in an environmentthat allows mistakes, which we
also talked about the openmindedness, which also comes
with humility. We talked aboutlearning, which is a bit of a
humble thing as well, becauseyou're always reaching out, you
(45:41):
know, you're not satisfied,whatever. And you've told me,
you know, last time, and I thinkyou said some of it today that,
that what keeps you going, whatinspires you as you're learning?
One or more things every daythat the you add to your
(46:01):
humanity, your own personalequation? Then we talked about
enthusiasm, and you're obviouslyenthusiastically at your age,
and do you mind if I tell youthese people how old you are?
Yeah, you can tell people thatwill tell you, I think you're
93. Right. Nobody would believeyou.
(46:25):
Know, you're too much fun. Areyou good sense of humor, which
we've talked about, like peoplein the valley collaboration. And
for, for me, this was veryspecial list because, you know,
we've interviewed lots of peoplein different different from
different perspectives. Andthis, this bundle that you've
(46:49):
presented to us, as a great isgreat, and it's all human. Every
one of those aspects is human isnot one bit of technology and
laying within this, this laundrylist of seven items starting
starting with humility, andthey all relate to each other.
And I would make sure that otherlist is perseverance. Okay. You
(47:10):
have to be able to acceptfailure, and bounce back and go
ahead. And of course, thatincludes all the things we
talked about self confidence,the ability to learn, the
optimism, the ability to lookinto the future. So everything
is connected, and everythinggoes.
(47:34):
Well, I It's I'd like to open itup to some questions. I we've
got two guests here besides Annand James de paques, emailed me
and said that he was as a boardmember, you had to go and talk
to his investors. And youmentioned to me Deepak that
(47:55):
you've met Marty, sometimepreviously, hey,
we'll go deeper.
met many, many times in SanDiego with the tag function.
Of course, of course. Yeah.
So when When did you guys gettogether
in San Diego, started mysemiconductor profession at the
(48:19):
LSI logic back in the early 90s.
And Marty was Rockstar justtried to come together with CDMA
TDMA technology at that time,and were the the partner working
with him. I'm talking aboutvery, very early precursor to
Qualcomm. Do you remember that?
Yeah, of course I do. Of course,the only difference between
(48:40):
Deepak and I is that he stillhas black hair. And he's still
young. We did that.
But I was just the kid growingup at that time, and you know,
so this goes way back on.
Yeah. Marty. Marty is, as youknow, is a rock star. I mean, it
completely changed thetelecommunication industry. And
(49:03):
so we were the geeks trying toget the silicon out. And so we
were working with him as welland his team and rest is
history, as they call it, andbasically then periodically meet
at the tie function. I mean, I'mstill in Orange County. And but
I used to see in San DiegoTigers is a group of that gets
(49:25):
together and promotesentrepreneurism. It started out
being mostly Indians, EastIndians. It is hopefully a very
general group. It is. And theytried to teach among other
things, youngsters how to becomeentrepreneurs. Of course, the
(49:47):
only way to do that is to letthem be entrepreneurs and
practices. So it's anotherexample of, of the future of
education and not to lectures,but actually practicing it,
right? Yes,absolutely. As a matter of fact,
I have two young sons, they'regoing through the same thing. We
(50:08):
say, Yeah, mom and dad will payfor your NBN. And they obviously
over the years hadn't seen us.
And so they've decided to starttheir own business, you know,
the eldest one in biotech, theyounger one in virtual reality,
augmented reality.
So Jerry, you're, you're, you'rebeing very quiet, there must be
(50:30):
something we've said that youdon't agree with.
Who's uh,we got we got Jerry word.
Oh, Jerry Warren. You know, Idon't I'm not so sure we should
let him talk. Okay, he's a CPAand an economist. So we're, he's
dangerous. Ithink I'm very dangerous. I'm a
cranky economist, I love yourpresentation, I'm delighted to
(50:53):
be able to listen to you I, Ishare most of your values. And
there's not much I can add tothis other than to support it.
I'm a firm believer inentrepreneurship and risk
taking. And I'm coming from theplace that basically says, You
don't learn a whole lot fromyour successes you learned from
your failures. So I'm, I'm, I'mdelighted where you've taken
(51:16):
this technology, and I don'twant to create too much of a
drama, but I've read some thingsabout forward looking people
that have that have questionedthe future of our society
because of the locked lack ofcontrol of this of this
technology. But that's to digtoo deep rest here, I think.
(51:38):
Yeah. Well, you know, peoplehave a tendency to think about
the good old days. And the factis that the good old days
weren't all that good. This istrue. And I have read a book out
called the fewer richer greeterby an economist, like you, Jerry
(51:58):
Davis, Lauren Siegel. And histhesis is that we are better off
now in every respect. And thatwill continue to happen that a
population growth will slow downand actually go in the opposite
direction. But the people willbe richer in the future, as we
(52:19):
will figure out how to have asustainable society of the
future as things are gettingbetter. Or I can't think of a
book that expresses my optimismbetter.
Great. Jerry,do you have a question for for
Martin?
No, I really don't. I'm justdelighted to be able to hear his
(52:40):
insights and see them. I'm acranky tax accountant. And I
really don't know how I canbring much to the table on this
one, other than to say I reallyam delighted to have the
opportunity here. You hear youspeak. Yeah.
What about James? Alright, let'sdo an first because James will
(53:02):
have a laundry. He already hadquestions before we started
this. And how about you? You'renot, you're gonna be unmuted
here.
Hi, Marty. I am an earlyadapter. I love technology. I
love everything about it. And Itotally appreciate what you're
(53:23):
saying. And I'm disappointedthat the marriage rate has not
improved. And in eons sincenavigation systems were put on
cars and phones, and that allhas to do with technology.
Because that had to be thebiggest argument we ever had.
This is where you were supposedto turn left. No, this is where
you're supposed to be. And thatis completely overcome. But
(53:47):
what's interesting to me is I'mquestioning whether we're
getting smarter. And that's myquestion to you today. You took
a hike in the real world. Iboxed with my virtual headset.
Before this call that was myworkout. So we each had an
exercise in a different world.
And I was doing it virtually.
(54:11):
But when I was young, and you aswell, we watched only three
telephone, television stations.
We all watch the same thing. Weall had the same news, and now
we have an abundance. And yet Idon't feel as though people are
learning anything. It appearsthat the way the knowledge is
(54:31):
being dispensed is you're onlygetting more of what you think
instead of being able to beprovoked to think remember that
show point counterpoint. Thatalways amazed me that I could
hear the other point of view.
With your optimism. Can you helpme understand how that can be
(54:54):
improved?
Well, that's That's it very hardquestion because it is very
easy, as I mentioned before, tobe complacent, to take the easy
road, and just kind of followwhere people are leading you
and, and not learn. So you haveto develop an attitude of being
(55:18):
unhappy of being aware of thefact of how dumb you are, and
what have you learned things.
But if they just think about,when you have those three
stations, you didn't have muchchoice. So we do two or three, a
few occasions, my wife and I sitdown to watch television, we
have Wi Fi the last time Ilooked at my spark TV, there
(55:46):
were at least 10 differentchannels, we look at each of
which has 1000s of selections ofwhat to do. Well, if you think
it's easy to do that. You're alot smarter than I am. So we are
being challenged all the time,if we allow ourselves to be
challenged. And I must say thatit's very easy to get into
(56:09):
complacency and just float. Andone of the easy things you could
do is just turn the TV on andwatch whatever pops up. And
there are people that do that.
And they are living in a virtualworld all the time. And I agree
with you. They are not growing,they are moving backwards and
(56:30):
blurting stuff. So I wouldsuggest that everybody is
adapting to the modern worldproperly. I think our
educational system is at leastthe old part of it is archaic.
The system of giving lecturesoccurred a couple of 100 years
(56:53):
ago, it was started by the, thewhoever the head of Austria was,
and his only purpose was tocreate soldiers to who would
follow orders so that he couldmaintain the security of his
country. And somehow for 200years, we've maintained the same
(57:14):
thing. When I was a kid inCanada, and we started out the
day singing God save the king.
And which tells you how old Iwas, by the way. I know how old
Queen Elizabeth is. And then wemoved to the states and things
didn't change. We just sayingthe pledge of allegiance or God
(57:35):
bless America. No, it wasn't itwas the Star Spangled Banner. So
they, their educational systemof giving people electors is
passe. Fortunately, there are alot of schools now that are
(57:56):
taking the high road, as theyare getting people to engage
with each other, as they aresolving problems. They are
challenging children as they areletting them learn by themselves
all day long. Because if theyrun into a problem, they do it
we do somebody's use the wordthat they don't know you look it
(58:18):
up. You can't do that unless youhave full time connection to the
internet. So I don't know how Igot off on this tangent. But
we'll hop back to my optimism.
Does it involve everybody but itshould. Then part of that is our
educational system. And part ofthe problem there as well. We
(58:42):
got teachers unions, and butwe're not going to get into the
politics at this moment. Changeis important. And anything in
our society that mitigateschange, that keeps people in a
rut is bad. And change ispainful. But very important to
(59:04):
you know, grow your mind withoutgoing through those things.
Well, one thing came to my mind.
About 15 minutes back and we'retalking about how do you tap it
tap into your your creativity orforce yourself to be looking at
things Buckminster Fuller wassupposed to have ever said I
read it somewhere. Every time hewent to an airport or was coming
(59:28):
in or is going out. He goes tothe magazine rack. And he would
always suppose like pick the topright hand corner. It didn't
matter what magazine it was, buthe felt that he would read it
from cover to cover. And thatwas one of the ways that
stimulated him to come up withall kinds of different ideas.
And another topic because youknow a might have been reading
(59:52):
an art magazine on nursing ormedical or other medical or
engineering or automobiles, itdidn't really matter to him all
it mattered was that heembarrassed embrace something
that was completely new to him.
And it gave him the opportunityto, to practice and relate to
(01:00:12):
the other things that he wasdoing.
Using because among thepublications that I read as the
economist, and it's very easy tostart to pick up the economist,
for a given week, and just startgoing through every page. And of
course, when you do that, youspend hours and hours. And it's
(01:00:36):
always interesting. But yourealize that you are, you're not
living in the real world whenyou do that. But I learned of
all kinds of stuff that I wouldnever be exposed to otherwise so
severely that, once again, youhave to plan to balance. My
(01:00:57):
solution to their problems iscalled the cake table of
contents. I know look at thetable of contents, you can pick
and choose, pick and choose as Ido that, with the Wall Street
Journal, the New York Times. Ihope I'm still learning all the
time. ButI don't want to I don't want to
(01:01:18):
leave this for almost an hour,one minute or two minutes over.
But I would like to give Jamesat least two questions with us,
because he'll he'll hurt uslater, because he didn't get a
chance to answer questions.
James, thank you, Mark, I reallyappreciate it. You know, Marty,
honestly, I did have a wholebunch of questions. And I was,
(01:01:42):
it really got me thinking abouthow much the cellphone has
impacted my life. And I don'twant to sound like somebody
who's going to start on a bigstory. But I just there, there
was at least five ways in whichI could see that, that this
invention just totally changedthe way I live. And, and that's,
(01:02:03):
but the fact is, I came inmainly obsessed with all the
negative ways. And, and we had avery brief conversation before
it started, I don't even thinkyou're speaking directly to me,
but it totally elevated myconsciousness around this idea
and took me from kind of havinga negative outlook to a positive
(01:02:26):
outlook. And so now I'm sort ofblank on the whole issue, which
I'm very grateful for, because Ithink I was falling into that
comfortable cynicism, whichallows you to not have to think
anymore. And you've, you know,activated me to start thinking
differently about it, which isgoing to improve the plasticity
of my brain, I'm pretty sure.
(01:02:49):
James, I have to tell you, firstof all, people were skeptics are
very important in our culture,for every 100 ideas, of maybe
one of them is worth pursuing,who is going to shut down the
other 90 days. So somebody'sgonna be skeptical. And you, you
(01:03:10):
should not change your attitude.
But just think about cellphones, in the sense of we use
it today, which is really thesmartphone is only 15 or 20
years old, that's half ageneration, it's going to take
generations to really understandhow this tool should really be
(01:03:31):
used and to evolve it, includinggetting good artificial
intelligence, and all the thingswe talked about earlier. So
we're just in the early days,and yes, there are gonna be
things that we're doing wrong.
Things that are, you know, howelse can we get to improve if we
(01:03:51):
don't make mistakes? So we got along ways to go. And I don't
suggest that the cell phone isby any means perfect today. In
fact, far from it. I think weengineers have a lot to do to to
make the cell phone reallyuseful, and to solve all the
(01:04:12):
problems of the world today. Andboy, do we know how many
problems we got bright talkabout what's going on to the
Ukraine, the poverty in inplaces like India and Africa,
India, especially going to pickon you the fact that here you
(01:04:32):
got a country of super contrast,right? The most advanced
technologies that are beingpursued in India and the poorest
people are living by contrast,and we ought to be working on so
thank God for the skeptics don'tchange.
That's kind of you but I wouldlike to close by saying that it
(01:04:55):
really has created a paradigmshift, you know, and in our or
culture and, and that there'salways reactions against any
kind of paradigm shift. Andusually they take a lot longer
to have an impact and thecellphone, it really was, you
know, I used to work inadvertising and I got to work
with a GT mobile net account.
And I remember, you know, havingto learn about packet data, and
(01:05:18):
all that, you know, PDA and CDMAand all that stuff. That was a
convergent technologies tryingto, you know, figure out who's
the beta and who's the VHS. And,you know, it helped me feed my
kids and make a living and doall kinds of things, you know,
the, this this device, and just,and I was just a marketing
(01:05:41):
person, but I do remember, I gotto get involved with the cell
phone before everybody had one.
There was a time when ourmarketing revolved around
convincing people that this wasa device you needed to have,
which now is, is would beridiculous. You know, people
want it way before their way outahead of you as far as their
(01:06:04):
desire for the device. But therewas a time when people didn't
know how bad they, they wantedthis. And so it was a lot of
fun. Getting involved in theearly days, I think I had one of
the first people who decidedthat they needed cell phones
were real estate people. Andit's very easy to understand
(01:06:27):
why. Because a real estateperson could only do two things,
they could be showing a home tosomebody, or they could be at
their office when somebodycalled looking for a new home.
And so if a cell phone allowedthem to do both at the same
time, doubled theirproductivity. So they were the
first people who really latchedon to the software as a tool.
(01:06:52):
The ones who were the worst waswere lawyers. Because they were
gonna you know, I don't know ifnone of you are lawyers, right.
So we could insult lawyers. Butlawyers tend to be arrogant
because they know all everythingabout the law, and none of the
rest of us do. And the lawyersthat say we don't need cell
(01:07:12):
phones, or the cell phone willnever be popular device for
society. So it took it took awhile. But that is the most
important thing, cell phones, dothey improve all of our
productivity and our safety, andlots of other things. So I don't
(01:07:33):
have to sell that to this group.
I could tell You're all noddingyour head, except I Jerry's not
because we know about codons.
They're all very numbersoriented. Don't really have any
imagination, right?
That's absolutely true thatwe're very, very linear. Between
(01:07:54):
center directors do we hit awall? That's pretty much
all I do this prove that Jerryhas got a great setting over and
he's open minded. And humble, ontop of all of
what, what Jerry didn't tell youwas that he's a fairly
substantial part of hispractices, business management,
and the man is had some reallyfamous people he's, he's he's
(01:08:18):
very humble about the fact thathis client bases as celebrity
oriented. He's always a geniusin his own right. So
well, it's a pleasure. Pleasure.
Thanks. Thank you.
Okay, Deepak did you want to doa question?
(01:08:38):
No, I mean, this point what whatgets you all excited about the
world in general? Nottechnology. There's this was
I'm sorry, do you see what getsme?
Yeah, gets you excited aboutwhat related issues good or bad,
(01:09:03):
but not not technologyspecifically, but
just you know, I, I have onegreat grandchild, and two more
on the way. So I want you toknow that family is a huge issue
is the if you haven't figured itout now it's people in general.
(01:09:28):
I really do believe that.
Everybody that I beat hassomething to teach me. I don't
have to like them all. Butbelieve it or not, I tend to
like almost everybody. You know,I have to make an exception for
for James, but you know, anybodythat's got long hair like that
can't be normal. Other Otherthan that, I really like all of
(01:09:49):
you guys. So it's very easy forme to be positive. Yes. I can't
do that as well. Yeah.
Did you find that, you know,passing values, your values
(01:10:12):
right? To two generations downthree generations down? Both
come easy based on yourinteraction with your family
members. You see, you see thathappening?
Well, you know, I can't I justcan't tell that because because
if you haven't figured out bynow I really don't like to give
(01:10:38):
advice, because I don't know ifI'm better than other people.
But the one of the my favoritethings to do is to talk to
children's classes. In fact, Ijust did that. Last week, I was
invited to high school and talkto a bunch of people, most of
(01:10:58):
whom were Latinos, in highschool here in San Diego. And
it's a thrill to see these kids,they're listening, and asking
good questions. And the, I'veonly mentioned Latinos, because
(01:11:19):
somehow or other in theirculture, they tend to be a
little shy. But so I talked forabout an hour, trying to get
them stimulated. And finally weended up editing this thing. And
they invited everybody to comeup and talk to me personally.
And 100% of these kids camedashing up. And everyone wanted
(01:11:44):
to talk and get again, they wereall excited there was more
important than anything I said,during that previous hour. So I
really do enjoy, I lovechildren, and I enjoy
interacting with them. And Ihave a few what do you what do
you call somebody who isfollower? Count anyway, I have a
(01:12:12):
few youngsters that I work withon a continuing basis. And maybe
they will learn something new.
But I have to tell you that theyteach me more than than I teach
them. And by the way, that'strue of this whole session. You
guys are unaware of the factthat a lot of things that we did
(01:12:32):
talked about in a way I expressmyself were different than I
have ever done before. Becauseeach of you stimulated that and
I'm grateful for that. And toyou Mark for inviting me to
come.
Oh, thanks, Marty. And a matterof fact, you are in the future
because that's one of thequestions we always ask people
(01:12:53):
at the end of these is that wasthere something about the
particular interaction that thatstimulated, you are interested
you are you know, whatever, andso you do live in the future. My
question already. Thank you verymuch. My pleasure.
Welcome to always creating values podcasts. This
is June 8. This is our 10thepisode since are starting the
podcast back in September. Andwe've had nothing but wonderful
guests. It's a real joy to dothis, this program, I've learned
(00:37):
so much, and I get anopportunity to test out the
things that I've learned, Ilearned as well. Today we have
Marty Cooper, Marty invented thethe handheld, first handheld
cell phone. And we'll talk alittle bit about more about who
he is. But let's talk a littlebit about the podcast. The
podcast is designed to focus onindividuals who, as part of
(01:02):
their their career or their lifeare consistently focused on what
can they do next. In most cases,in a positive perspective,
whether it's in their businessesor personal life, we've chosen
always to look at people whohave been very successful so
that we can help peopleunderstand that they too can can
(01:23):
be more successful if they paymore attention to what they can
do, and not what they can't do.
And on a consistent on aconsistent basis. I'm Mark
Fowler, and I'm the CEO of stoneManagement Corporation in the
CEO, revolutionaryconversations, LLC. My business
revolves around helpingbusinesses go from where they
(01:43):
are until where they need to beor they want to be or what they
can be. And as that processworks, it can be either a crisis
situation or a growth situation.
In most cases, our focus hasalways been on tapping into the
potential of the individuals inthe company and the team and
what they've done and maybe whatthey've not done in order to
(02:05):
help them go to another level ofcreativity on a consistent
basis. And historically, it's,it's been very, very, very
successful, because we're, we'retapping into the positive
aspects. It's not that we don'tlook at the, you know, what's
wrong, but we need to focus onwhat's right and what we can do
about it. And that's part ofwhat we talked about today and
(02:26):
the next month, and and what theother other episodes also talked
about, which is, what can we do,what can we do? What can we do
about that? So I hope you'lljoin us in next July, July. I
think it's the 13th. We aregoing to have a panel with three
(02:46):
individuals from the technologyarena to talk about pretty much
the same thing. How do we how dowe take what we've created, and
and tie it to the humancondition and to the future for
a much more collaborative,collaborative world. My guest
today is Marty Cooper. He's wellknown for having invented at
(03:10):
Bell Labs. And I he'll talkabout the fact that this was a
big team. This was big teameffort for him, and his his crew
and as great stories about whatit's like to be part of a team
to creating all kinds of newdifferent kinds of technology.
And I'm going to first ask Martyto talk a little bit about his
(03:33):
career, and how he he's alwaysconsistently adding value to his
process and to those around him,Marty?
Well, thank you for having me,Mark. It's a pleasure to be
here. That's a huge request,you're just there to talk about
myself, because I hate to talkabout myself. I like to talk
(03:55):
about what goes out in theworld, what other people are
doing. But, uh, but I am anengineer. More importantly, I'm
an optimist. But my optimism isevidence based. Because I
believe and and I have seen theevidence that the world is
(04:19):
better off now than it has everbeen before.
Pardon, including your cellphone. For the people live
longer, they're healthier,they're richer, and there's no
reason to believe that the worldcan't continue to get better and
better. And that will onlyhappen if we all of us
(04:42):
contribute to that. The thereare lots of things going on.
That seemed to be negative. Thatseemed to be inhibiting the
growth. I think we recover sorryabout that. All these things,
but they take a very positiveattitude, and a belief that
(05:08):
things can get better and willget better. Another aspect of
it, you want in life isobjectivity. You cannot let
emotion carry away, you have tolook at the evidence and look at
life, in real terms. A lot ofpeople do get carried away by
(05:30):
their emotions, as they decidewhat they want to believe and
operate on that beliefindependent of whether it makes
any sense or not. And that'sdestructive. And I've learned
over the years analyzingyourself, and, and establishing
(05:51):
goals for yourself that arerealistic, and and are
meaningful, instead of emotionaland just aspirations is, is
really important.
How has that helped? How hasthat helped you in your own
development? I mean, you know,you were the leader on that
(06:11):
team. And for the the hand, thefirst handheld cell phone, cell
phone. How did that help you winin that development, and a
little bit about, you know, alittle bit about what that's
like to, to be on the cuttingedge and the excitement that
goes along with developingsomething like that?
(06:33):
Well, it's very exciting, youknow, you could use your
imagination, and let your mindmove freely into the future. I
tell people that I know a lotabout the future because I spend
more time in the future thanmost other people do. The other
people call that daydreaming. Icall that using your imagination
(06:56):
constructively. But, but I'vebeen very fortunate that most of
the luckiest thing that everhappened to me was joining
Motorola, which identity wasactually my second job. After I
left the Navy, my first job wasworking for the Bell system at a
company called teletype, whichdoesn't exist any longer. And
(07:20):
it's a good example of peoplegetting caught up in technology,
and forgetting the fact thattechnology is the application of
science, to create products andservices that make people's
lives better. So I hope you gotthe the important part of that
one is technology is nothingwithout the people part of it.
(07:44):
And yet, so much of my life isinvolved. I'm on a FCC
committee, you know about thefederal communications system
manages all of the radiospectrum and communications in
general in this country, theyestablished the rules and, and
(08:05):
are the vanities, events,segment of our society. And
there are so many people on thiscommittee that are caught up in
the technology. And to them, thetechnology is everything. And
they don't even think about thepeople part. And that's just
when I can give you an exampleof that. When people talk about
(08:30):
5g, all of you know about 5g. Wethink we do ya? Well, whenever
you know, it's probably wrong,where I know, you've got caught
up in the emotions of the salespitch of the carriers. Because
they're really two importantthings for people with regard to
(08:53):
cell phones. First of all, canyou make a call wherever you
are, we call that coverage? Andthe second thing is, can you
afford it? And those are thethings that we have somehow lost
sight of in this with advancedtechnology that we have today.
(09:14):
There are still many parts ofthis country that don't have
coverage where people can't talkenough. Could you imagine that?
You know, you cannot get aneducation today without having a
cell phone and cut and servicefull time. And yet, half of our
students do not have that forone reason or another. And the
(09:35):
two reasons are they really havecoverage. You go into rural
areas, and there are many ruralareas that have no self gotten
cell phone coverage at all. Andthere are many students
throughout the country who justcan't afford the service. When
cellular started in thiscountry, we had the lowest cost
cellular service in the world.
Now we now have among thehighest costs. And part of that
(09:57):
is because the carriers haveforgotten that the people are
the people are the ones thatthey are serving now, they see a
future called the Internet ofThings where they are going to
use wireless coverage, tocontrol all kinds of things in
(10:17):
our life. They talk aboutdriverless cars. They talk about
doctors doing operations usingvirtual reality. Well, I'm not
going to have a doctor operateon me with virtual reality. I'll
tell you that right now. Butthey've forgotten the fact that
(10:38):
the important things, thingslike education, things like
health care, those are thingsthat have to be developed now.
And people that don't have thoseservices today, are they can I
get negative benefit in the mostadvanced technologies. And so
(10:59):
that's a battle that I am goingthrough continuously now. Trying
to persuade my colleagues andthe FCC Advisory Council, that
the Internet of Things is justfine. I believe that, but should
we finish the internet of peoplefirst, and then go on to the
(11:20):
internet of things.
You know, it's kind ofinteresting. You know, Devon
Blaine, your, your PR person whowas actually our first, our
first guest, suggested you, thenwe jumped at it, at the
(11:42):
opportunity. And, you know, mybusiness is all about people.
You know, there's all kinds oftechnology, and there's systems
and corporate finance, and allkinds of different things that
go on in a business,manufacturing, and whatever. But
you got to pay attention to thepeople. And when I decided to do
(12:03):
our pre interview, I was sosurprised that when we were
going through it, that you wereso focused on the needs of the
human, I thought maybe, youknow, you were very focused,
like we see a lot of nowadays,people just focusing on the next
bells and whistle, bell andwhistle that a piece of
(12:24):
technology can can do. from acreative perspective. You know,
a lot of times, especially inmanufacturing people over
engineer something, they justkeep over engineering and over
engineering it. And oftentimes,we see a lot of software that
has so many things that nobodycan do, I guess it's trying to,
(12:48):
you know, reach out to a biggermarket. But how do you how do
you relate to that, overengineering? As a relationship
today? And what creative thingsmight we do to to marginalize
that a bit or not marginalizeit, but turn it into something
more more productive?
Well, the cell phone is a verygood example of that. Because
(13:11):
one of the things that I havedone from the beginning is, you
know, I want to stay connected,and hard to stay connected if
you're not part of acorporation, and I am not, no,
I'm in Finland. And so I havealways had the latest cell
phone, which you say, Well,isn't that nice? That I'm
staying connected? Well, whathas happened is that I never
(13:33):
really catch up to the, with thelatest technology is because I,
every time I get to do cellphone, I have to start to learn
it all over again. People haveforgotten this issue of
technology. They talked abouttechnology being intuitive.
Technology should not beintuitive, it should be
invisible. The technology oughtto be there helping you allowing
(13:59):
you to do things moreeffectively than you would
otherwise. And the besttechnology is not even
noticeable. It's they're helpingyou. But you don't have to think
about it. The cell phone is justthe opposite of that. They tell
you well, you know, the cellphone is extension of you. Well,
I happen to believe that whilethey say the way you're going to
(14:19):
make this thing and etc, is ifyou're going to pick the apps
that serve you most effectively.
Oh, that's wonderful. Now youhave to go and select among 2
million apps. If you have aniPhone, or or two or 3 million
apps, if you've got an Androidphone and decide which ones are
right for you. And that'sridiculous. So I have a vision
(14:41):
of what the future cell phonewould look like. And that cell
phone is your cell phone. It'sbark, Fowler's cell phone, it's
extension of your personality,and it's got an artificial
intelligence built into it. Thatis constantly out. analyzing
your habits, your performance,the way you would like to do
(15:04):
things. And it will either findan app that serves you properly.
Or if it doesn't have one ofthose 2 billion apps, it will
create one. But the wholepurpose of this cell phone is to
make your life better, not to bemore complicated, not to provide
you with all kinds of options.
(15:29):
It is to make your life moreeffective, and more comfortable.
And so when I see the cellphone, evolving to is as a
personal instrument, everyperson cell phone will be
different today, others, it'scertainly not going to be as, as
you mentioned, to be early inour conversation, and this flat
(15:51):
piece of plastic held up againsta curved head in this
uncomfortable position. It'sgoing to be optimal in
everything it does. And so byexample of optimal and optimal
cell phone that whose purpose istalking to other people is a
(16:15):
device it's perhaps a anearring, baby, it's actually
embedded under your skin. Andit's a powerful computer that
you talk to and you say, give meMark Fowler, Lee phone. And this
computer's gonna say to me,which Mark filer Do you want.
(16:36):
You want the guy that used to bethe chairman of the FCC, or he
want this guy that's working onconversations. And I said, Give
me the conversation mark. Andnext to get oh, we're talking.
And I have to not have to thinkabout technology, in any sense
at all can be. That's theultimate example
you're talking about and muchmore interactive, as opposed to
(16:57):
following their rules. You'refollowing your rules.
You got it, you got it. Theseengineers make things so they
say oh, it's obvious. All youhave to remember that in order
to do this. And then they got alist of things that you got to
remember. And that's totallycounterintuitive. You should not
have to remember everything, youshould do things in a natural
(17:20):
way, the way you would doanything else. If you think of
something as it could express itin words, it will or inactions,
this artificial intelligencewill figure it out, and make
your life easier for you. Andthat's what technology you ought
to do. So this, the future cellphone is going to be distributed
(17:40):
throughout your body. It's goingto have sensors, it's going to
be analyzing your the yourmetrics, things like your blood
pressure, and other aspects ofyour health. And actually,
interpreting those things. Anddeciding whether you may be
(18:04):
getting suckered on and out isin future of medicine, instead
of treating waiting for you toget sick, and then trying to
cure you of that sickness. Andwhy not anticipate the sickness,
measure the things that aregoing on in your body? And when
you're sick, this starts tohappen, zap it and stop it.
(18:27):
That's there is a potentialdoing that as well. Totally
eliminating disease. To me,that's a People objective. Not
one of just having anothergadget. That I mean,
let me let me you know, this isvery expensive, and that what
you're saying is very expensive.
But it also ends up being multi,many multi dimensional in the
(18:53):
sense that you're talking abouthealth, you're talking about
maybe finance, you're talkingabout remembering all the things
you have to remember there's alldifferent variables that fit
into there. How How, how are thecell phone business connected in
that way? I mean, they've triedto do it through those apps, but
how would they do it in a biggerway they would have to connect
(19:16):
with a variety of differentother technologies or
capabilities.
Well, of course, there's anawful lot of work that has to be
done in America. And one exampleis for education. Our whole
education system today, in mostplaces is backwards. The way
(19:42):
people learn things. It's notbeing lectured to. It's by
solving problems. Don't youagree with that? I would learn
as you're faced with a problemyou have to solve the problem.
You have with have experience soif you've learned the tools that
you need. And then you've got tosolve these problems. Well,
(20:04):
somebody has to create anenvironment where you can do
that. You can't do this withoutbeing connected all the time.
And that's why you have aconviction that the future of
education is every student isgoing to be connected 24/7. And
that doesn't mean that they'retotally engrossed in their cell
(20:26):
phone, but they are learning allthe time. And anytime they want
to get a piece of information,they can go to their cell phone.
And when they go to school, theyare being presented with
problems that they have tosolve. Somebody has to create
this environment. And so there'san awful lot of work that has to
(20:46):
be done. But of course, that'sthat's what we engineers are for
work. We, we have to anticipatewhat the deeds of people and
come up with solutions to thosedeeds.
Well, let's let's flashback toBell Labs. You know, like, like
I mentioned, your, your conceptsof today for the future are
(21:11):
pretty expansive, and kind ofmore than cutting edge to back
then that you have any idea thiswas on your plate for this, you
know, did you have futuristic,almost science fiction, like
ideas about what you arecreating and what it could be?
Of course, by the way, I was atMotorola, I think you were very
(21:36):
much aware of that. My enemy atthat time was was in fact, Bell
Labs, and the Bell System. Andbecause the Bell system then was
a monopoly. Their principal wasthey work in a society, decide
what our future was, and tell uswhat our future is going to be.
And you become a marketing guy,Paramount everything else, you
(22:01):
know that the way you domarketing is you find out what
people need, and what they wantand respond to those needs. Not
you're not the one that tellsthem what they need. But getting
off the track. Yes, we did havea vision of what the future was
going to be. We knew thatsomeday everybody would have a
(22:23):
cell phone. They the story thatwe told was that someday when
you were born, you'd be assigneda phone number. If you didn't
answer the phone, you died. Youif you think about it, we're
almost there. Now. There aremore cell phones, more mobile
phones in the world today and inour people. That's true in
(22:46):
almost every country in theworld, in fact, in their
emerging countries, there hardlyhave any word phones left
anymore. And the amount of Wiredphones in this country is going
down, down down. So we knew thatthat was going to happen. Did we
know that there was going to bea supercomputer in every phone?
Not really, what we demonstratedthe very first cell phone in New
(23:12):
York in 1973, that there were nopersonal computers, there were
no digital cameras, as theinternet did not exist. So did
we anticipate that all of thosethings would be embraced in the
single little gadget, you couldhold your hand, not a chance.
But we did know that this wasgoing to be pervasive that
(23:33):
everybody was going to have thisthing. And that our lives that
we are going to be changed andchanged for the better. And the
reason we knew that at Motorolais that we were in the
communications business. And wewere making two way radios for a
police department and forbusinesses. And the only
function of these things was tomake the businesses and the
(23:57):
police departments operate moreefficiently. And so when the
bell system came along and said,well, the future of
communications is going to becar phones. And we said all
we've gone way beyond that. Thephone is a an extension of the
(24:18):
person. You only spend a fewpercent of your time in the car,
just the phone is gonna bethere, making your life better
all the time. And we had abattle with the Bell System that
went on for 12 years where theywere promoting powerful, they
never gave up on it even whenthey first offered the service.
(24:42):
Their their first offering waspowerful loads are made
measurement life was to come upwith a device that was an
extension of people, people'spersonalities. And the very
first Over the weekend was infact, a personal handheld phone.
(25:06):
That was a 1983. It took 10years from the demonstration of
the first cell phone to win thefirst commercial phone curve.
And even then, at the beginning,most of the foods people bought
were car foods. Yeah, Ihad one that was I liked it was
right there.
(25:28):
Yeah, except that you were inyour car all the time. And when
you were not in your car, youhad no communications. So those
were really primitive days wherethey are.
Let's, let's, let's, let's tapin a little bit about, you know,
we talked about your creativity.
And, you know, you were talkingabout the, in your younger days
(25:50):
used to read a lot and used tohave some more time on your
hands. And that you might havethat this is where you're able
to tap into that vision thatyou're talking about. I'm
looking forward, you know, youknow, for other people to be
thinking about how they beginyoung, at a young age to begin
(26:12):
to appreciate their owncreativity. Any thoughts for you
about the you can share abouthow you found special time and
how you used it. I know, I wassick as a kid quite a bit. And I
ended up reading a lot. Probablywell ahead of what I said. But
(26:32):
it was very stimulatingreception for me to tell people
how they should become creativeor how they should conduct their
lives. I know how it happened tome, my folks were serial
entrepreneurs, they had a numberof failures before they finally
(26:53):
came up with a business that'sthat serve them well for the
rest of their life. And so Ispent a lot of time alone. And
that's where I evolved. What Ibelieve was vivid imagination. I
think I've mentioned to youbefore that the reason I know so
(27:16):
much about the future is that Ispent so much time there. People
say that's unrealistic, I don'tthink so as you as long as you
stick, you realize that you dolive in a real world. And at
times, you have to go back andearn a living. But having an
imagination is very important.
(27:40):
But I have to tell you aboutthat every person that is alive
today is different than everyother person that is alive. And
not only that every person alivetoday is different than any
person who has ever lived andever will for the foreseeable
future. So how can you presumeto tell any one individual how
(28:02):
they should conduct their lives?
They should?
Well, I was just tapping intowhat you do that might stimulate
something for them.
While you have to be optimisticI did, I think you haven't
figured that out quite how I'mthe optimist of the world. My
wife has found that my wife is amuch better executive than I am.
(28:24):
Because if you think about it,if you're running a company, the
one thing you do not want tohave is a guy who is totally
optimistic running a company,you want to have somebody that's
anticipating all the bad thingsthat can happen. While I'm not
very good at this,hopefully all the good things
too, you know? Well, that'sright,
you have to have a combinationof aspiring that to make your
(28:48):
company grow and be better, andto offer new services. But you
also have to be aware thatthings can't go wrong. And that
you have to be responsive tothat. I've I have been in roles
of running companies. Before, Iwould say that being an optimist
(29:10):
has not served me very well. Inthose roles. You have to have a
balance between optimism andrealism.
Well, one of the other thingsyou said was, you know, a real
jewel, or, excuse me, a realjewel for me. Was the
conversation about what are someof the qualities that
(29:33):
individuals need to be creativeor you've experienced them and
either yourself or others and Ithink one of them was kind of
the the first first one out ofthe box was humility. And I
think that tied to the fact thatwe can't know it all. We can't
be the ones that you know, beall and end all if you've got a
(29:54):
project you've you've got toembrace others.
Well, that's right, there is abalance there as well. VARK.
First of all, arrogance does notserve anybody well, at all. So
you have to realize that there'sno way any individual can know
everything. But you do have tohave confidence in yourself, you
(30:17):
have to have confidence to knowthat when you run into a
difficulty, and you always willrun into difficulties, that you
can learn how to overcome thatdifficulty, that there are
tools, that there are ways ofsolving these things. So you
have to have confidence inyourself. But there's a big
(30:38):
difference between confidenceand their arrogance. And I think
utility is extraordinarilyimportant. Of course, I'm even
one thing I say is that I amhumble, I'm fat, I'm more humble
than anybody else. But I thinkhumanity is more an expression
(31:02):
of a realistic view of what lifeis, there is nobody that knows
everything. There's nobody thatcan solve every problem. You
just have to realize that youare more capable than you
realize that you are that youshould not be afraid of taking
on challenges, you should notbe. And I must tell you, this is
(31:24):
the most important thing that Iever learned. When I joined
Motorola. Let me start overagain. One of the most important
things that I ever learned waswhen I joined Motorola, the
advice that we got from thefounder of the company was, do
(31:48):
not fear failure, reach out. Andthat's company practice that
I've had numerous failures whenI was at Motorola. But they
recognized that they I hadsuccesses, that I had the
ability to solve problems, andthey tolerated by failures, and
(32:08):
allowed me to proceeded hadenough successes, that that I
had a very successful career atMotorola. So this concept of
humility, along with confidence,the balance between those two is
crucial for somebody that wantsto make a contribution to, to
(32:32):
science to life, to engineeringto whatever they're doing. Yeah,
it's,you know, a lot of the world
today is they're always lookingfor the answer, as opposed to,
like you said, trying to figureit out yourself. You know, one
of the things that I find thatit's kind of a double edged
(32:53):
sword that our friend James wastalking about earlier, before
the meeting was a, there's thegood and the bad. And one of the
things that that I think is goodis that there's lots of
information. On the other hand,a lot of that information can be
half right. All right, notright. And we don't challenge,
(33:18):
we just assume that informationbecause it's in the book of
internet, that, that it, thatit's correct. And I can act upon
it as opposed to challenging.
And at the same time, beinghumble enough to talk to
somebody else or verify, do yourdue diligence about something as
(33:41):
opposed to just react?
You're 100%, right, whereeducation never ever stops you.
And of course, for me, that'sthe most exciting thing in their
life. Like, I learned stuffevery day. But part of education
is accepting the fact that youcan be wrong. And the the
(34:03):
importance of being able to say,you know, I didn't know that. I
thought that, that I was wrong.
And I've learned something new,is it's hard for people to do,
you don't want to have spent alot of time learning something
and then to have to unlearn itand learn something new. It's
not an easy task. And yet, it'svery important in the
(34:25):
educational process. If you wantto
know what one of the more simplethings we've learned during
COVID was to to be more like tohave a zoning, you know, we're
all all very comfortable meetingwith people in person. And now
we don't meet with people atthat much we do, obviously
meeting more, but it's acompletely different protocol.
(34:48):
You have to pick up things,nuances in the conversation that
you didn't have to pick up. Whenyou were when you were in a
conversation, a real one rightthere in front of in front of
each other. So we've had a callcorrect our learning just how we
deal with people. Now, it'scombination of zoom and nuts.
You know,that's a very important comment.
(35:08):
A zoom call is not the same as aperson to person call, right.
And anybody that thinks that thecase is totally mistaken, which
means you've got to startlearning all over again, right?
There's an interesting thingabout learning, I'm sorry that I
keep getting distracted. Butit's your day. But it turns out
(35:31):
that learning is not a naturalthing. You have to go out of
your way to learn something. Andif you decide that you'd know
everything, and you don't haveto learn, and this is it, this
is not something that I justmade up. The scientists have
actually done studies, if youstop learning, if you are
(35:52):
satisfied with what you are andwhat you know, and you don't
believe you have to learnthings, you lose the ability to
learn, if that's the scariestthing, and I could think of that
you could get into a situationwhere you don't know everything,
and you can't learn even if youwant to, oh, that is so scary to
(36:14):
me. I just, I just can't imagineit. And yet, many, many people
go through life doing that, theyget to a stage of life, where
they think they are verysatisfied with everything
they've done. They go out andplay golf, they could do their
job, the same job that they'vedone before, with a lot of
(36:34):
learning anything new, and theyforget, they lose the ability to
learn. And as I said before,that's the scariest thing I can
imagine. And yet, I think mostof our people in our society do
this.
Well, it's gotten easier andeasier, because we're told,
we're told a lot about what weshould do, as opposed to what we
(36:57):
could. But you know, there weresix other items, and I'm going
to go through them and I thinkhumility, which is what was the
first concept that came out ofyour, your brain and your mouth,
on our pre interview. The otherones were, I'm gonna just gonna
go through all six of them. openmindedness likes to learn,
(37:21):
you're just talking about thelearning, aspect, enthusiasm.
good sense of humor, and thewhich goes along with humility.
Because if you don't have a goodsense of humor, when things go
wrong, you know, you're you'regonna hurt yourself badly, like
(37:42):
people. And then finally, thevalue of collaboration. And as I
was going back through ourtranscript from our last
meeting, you tied humility andvalue of collaboration sort of
together. But I see humility isto falls into all every one of
those. In other words, it's kindof a base, you really can't be
(38:05):
so open minded unless you have acertain amount of humility.
Okay, you know, okay, this iswhat I need to learn, okay, that
kind of stuff. Andyou can't laugh at yourself. If
you're humble, right?
That's right. You can't, youcan't. It's and you do have to
laugh at yourself? You. I wouldimagine, I know, for me, God
(38:25):
can't imagine how many timesI've actually had to laugh at
myself. And you probably too,you said that. Motorola was very
benevolent as it related to thethings that, that that didn't
work, but, you know, keepplugging away till it works.
Yeah. So of those, what would beI would imagine the value of
(38:46):
collaboration, and how do youtap into a lot of people? And I
would think that cell phone hassome of that some of the reason
because you can go to the cellphone to get some information,
as opposed to calling somebodythat might have the nuances of a
particular thing that they needto know. You know, how do you
(39:07):
help people tap into it? How doyou help people tap into the
collaborative need? Besides thefact that you're, you know,
you're one of the, you're thelead collaborator, but you know,
sometimes people don't even knowwhat collaboration is. So
you bet. Well, it'll go back towhat collaboration was in the
(39:30):
old days. And they think about,who was one of the most
important collaboration,collaborators in history. It was
Albert Einstein. And when AlbertEinstein had an idea, he would
think about it aloud. He'd writeit down. And then he sent a
letter to Niels Bohr or one ofthe other geniuses that he was
(39:50):
talking to. And that letterwould take a couple of weeks to
go through the mail in Europe,and then the other guy would
think about it for a while andsort of back. So that was what
collaboration was 100 years ago.
Today, you would I could sithere and exchange ideas as we do
that, virtually instantaneously.
(40:18):
The future of collaboration isthat we can be together, solving
a problem and actually workingon the problem in real time. So
if we're just to pick aridiculous example, if you and I
are trying to design anautomobile engine, we could
actually be a virtual reality,do exactly what we're doing
(40:40):
here. But taking this engineapart, and putting it together
with different parts, and tryingout new new ideas, and all that
could be happeninginstantaneously. So the idea
that two people could createmore than twice the productivity
(41:02):
that a single person had. And ifyou think about it, that's going
to solve the biggest problem inthe world today, which is
poverty, is there any reason whyanybody should be poor when we
have so much capability toproduce that so the whole
concept of virtual realityaugmented reality, I think the
(41:26):
future of those technologies is,in fact, improving
collaboration, and eliminatingthe whole thought of not only
poverty, but anybody having lessthan anybody else out there, or
there is the possibility in along range future, that money
(41:47):
becomes valueless, that it'sexperience is important, but
anybody can have anything theywant. Because we are so
productive, that we could offerthat to everybody. So I think I
give you an example of how anoctopus thinks work. But I'm
serious about that. I believethat that oh, that can happen.
(42:07):
And if the tools for making thathappen are all evident today,
the virtual reality is just oneof them. But collaboration is
absolutely crucial. And youcan't collaborate unless we have
people collaborating. So long.
As you keep telling me over andover again, it all comes back to
the same thing about peopleworking together. And with the
(42:30):
right attitude.
Yeah, well, the right attitudeis, you know, as opposed Yeah,
it's got to stay within thecollaborative, collaborative. I
don't want to use the wordentity but dynamic or energy,
you know, when it starts to be,well, now I can run off and do
(42:51):
this, as opposed to, what can Ido for the team, what kind of
you know, it's part of part ofthe whole process, meaning
making sure that you're addingvalue to not only the project,
but to the team, as well asyourself. But a lot of people
and you and I have all seenthat, that people get together
(43:11):
in a collaborative environment.
And all of a sudden, they say,Well, that's an idea I really
need. And I want to run off anddo it on our own, which, you
know, just diminishes thecollaboration that that was, you
know, that was built?
Well, I have to tell you about,you do stimulate great ideas
(43:32):
that the team that I hadtogether with an extraordinary
group, but I actually took over20 people to create that very
first cell phone. And every oneof those engineers was smarter
in their field that I was, theyknew more about it. And if I
wasn't humble enough to acceptthat I could never put that team
(43:53):
together. Guess I had the dream.
I had the vision. But I had tocommunicate that vision to all
these guys. But without a wholebunch of people who are smarter
than I was, this sample couldnever happen to the first place.
(44:14):
It's almost a rule of thumb fora leader to come to grips with
the fact that they have to hirepeople that know more about
something that they than theydo. And that is one of the
hardest things an entrepreneurdeals with is having taken care
of everything and everything andeverything from washing the
dishes to going out andmarketing, you know, that all of
(44:36):
a sudden, in order to growthere, they've got to reach out
to like you said, people whoknow more.
I haven't figured out how ElonMusk exhibits humility, but
somehow there must be theresomewhere.
I shake my head so it's not it'soutside my it's outside my
(44:58):
bandwidth. Me too. If I know youdon't want to give advice, but
if I look at these six, sevencharacteristics that we talked
about, which was starting withhumility, like you said, You've
(45:19):
got to be able to understandthat there are others that know
more than you do, and thatyou're gonna make mistakes. And
you need to be in an environmentthat allows mistakes, which we
also talked about the openmindedness, which also comes
with humility. We talked aboutlearning, which is a bit of a
humble thing as well, becauseyou're always reaching out, you
(45:41):
know, you're not satisfied,whatever. And you've told me,
you know, last time, and I thinkyou said some of it today that,
that what keeps you going, whatinspires you as you're learning?
One or more things every daythat the you add to your
(46:01):
humanity, your own personalequation? Then we talked about
enthusiasm, and you're obviouslyenthusiastically at your age,
and do you mind if I tell youthese people how old you are?
Yeah, you can tell people thatwill tell you, I think you're
93. Right. Nobody would believeyou.
(46:25):
Know, you're too much fun. Areyou good sense of humor, which
we've talked about, like peoplein the valley collaboration. And
for, for me, this was veryspecial list because, you know,
we've interviewed lots of peoplein different different from
different perspectives. Andthis, this bundle that you've
(46:49):
presented to us, as a great isgreat, and it's all human. Every
one of those aspects is human isnot one bit of technology and
laying within this, this laundrylist of seven items starting
starting with humility, andthey all relate to each other.
And I would make sure that otherlist is perseverance. Okay. You
(47:10):
have to be able to acceptfailure, and bounce back and go
ahead. And of course, thatincludes all the things we
talked about self confidence,the ability to learn, the
optimism, the ability to lookinto the future. So everything
is connected, and everythinggoes.
(47:34):
Well, I It's I'd like to open itup to some questions. I we've
got two guests here besides Annand James de paques, emailed me
and said that he was as a boardmember, you had to go and talk
to his investors. And youmentioned to me Deepak that
(47:55):
you've met Marty, sometimepreviously, hey,
we'll go deeper.
met many, many times in SanDiego with the tag function.
Of course, of course. Yeah.
So when When did you guys gettogether
in San Diego, started mysemiconductor profession at the
(48:19):
LSI logic back in the early 90s.
And Marty was Rockstar justtried to come together with CDMA
TDMA technology at that time,and were the the partner working
with him. I'm talking aboutvery, very early precursor to
Qualcomm. Do you remember that?
Yeah, of course I do. Of course,the only difference between
(48:40):
Deepak and I is that he stillhas black hair. And he's still
young. We did that.
But I was just the kid growingup at that time, and you know,
so this goes way back on.
Yeah. Marty. Marty is, as youknow, is a rock star. I mean, it
completely changed thetelecommunication industry. And
(49:03):
so we were the geeks trying toget the silicon out. And so we
were working with him as welland his team and rest is
history, as they call it, andbasically then periodically meet
at the tie function. I mean, I'mstill in Orange County. And but
I used to see in San DiegoTigers is a group of that gets
(49:25):
together and promotesentrepreneurism. It started out
being mostly Indians, EastIndians. It is hopefully a very
general group. It is. And theytried to teach among other
things, youngsters how to becomeentrepreneurs. Of course, the
(49:47):
only way to do that is to letthem be entrepreneurs and
practices. So it's anotherexample of, of the future of
education and not to lectures,but actually practicing it,
right? Yes,absolutely. As a matter of fact,
I have two young sons, they'regoing through the same thing. We
(50:08):
say, Yeah, mom and dad will payfor your NBN. And they obviously
over the years hadn't seen us.
And so they've decided to starttheir own business, you know,
the eldest one in biotech, theyounger one in virtual reality,
augmented reality.
So Jerry, you're, you're, you'rebeing very quiet, there must be
(50:30):
something we've said that youdon't agree with.
Who's uh,we got we got Jerry word.
Oh, Jerry Warren. You know, Idon't I'm not so sure we should
let him talk. Okay, he's a CPAand an economist. So we're, he's
dangerous. Ithink I'm very dangerous. I'm a
cranky economist, I love yourpresentation, I'm delighted to
(50:53):
be able to listen to you I, Ishare most of your values. And
there's not much I can add tothis other than to support it.
I'm a firm believer inentrepreneurship and risk
taking. And I'm coming from theplace that basically says, You
don't learn a whole lot fromyour successes you learned from
your failures. So I'm, I'm, I'mdelighted where you've taken
(51:16):
this technology, and I don'twant to create too much of a
drama, but I've read some thingsabout forward looking people
that have that have questionedthe future of our society
because of the locked lack ofcontrol of this of this
technology. But that's to digtoo deep rest here, I think.
(51:38):
Yeah. Well, you know, peoplehave a tendency to think about
the good old days. And the factis that the good old days
weren't all that good. This istrue. And I have read a book out
called the fewer richer greeterby an economist, like you, Jerry
(51:58):
Davis, Lauren Siegel. And histhesis is that we are better off
now in every respect. And thatwill continue to happen that a
population growth will slow downand actually go in the opposite
direction. But the people willbe richer in the future, as we
(52:19):
will figure out how to have asustainable society of the
future as things are gettingbetter. Or I can't think of a
book that expresses my optimismbetter.
Great. Jerry,do you have a question for for
Martin?
No, I really don't. I'm justdelighted to be able to hear his
(52:40):
insights and see them. I'm acranky tax accountant. And I
really don't know how I canbring much to the table on this
one, other than to say I reallyam delighted to have the
opportunity here. You hear youspeak. Yeah.
What about James? Alright, let'sdo an first because James will
(53:02):
have a laundry. He already hadquestions before we started
this. And how about you? You'renot, you're gonna be unmuted
here.
Hi, Marty. I am an earlyadapter. I love technology. I
love everything about it. And Itotally appreciate what you're
(53:23):
saying. And I'm disappointedthat the marriage rate has not
improved. And in eons sincenavigation systems were put on
cars and phones, and that allhas to do with technology.
Because that had to be thebiggest argument we ever had.
This is where you were supposedto turn left. No, this is where
you're supposed to be. And thatis completely overcome. But
(53:47):
what's interesting to me is I'mquestioning whether we're
getting smarter. And that's myquestion to you today. You took
a hike in the real world. Iboxed with my virtual headset.
Before this call that was myworkout. So we each had an
exercise in a different world.
And I was doing it virtually.
(54:11):
But when I was young, and you aswell, we watched only three
telephone, television stations.
We all watch the same thing. Weall had the same news, and now
we have an abundance. And yet Idon't feel as though people are
learning anything. It appearsthat the way the knowledge is
(54:31):
being dispensed is you're onlygetting more of what you think
instead of being able to beprovoked to think remember that
show point counterpoint. Thatalways amazed me that I could
hear the other point of view.
With your optimism. Can you helpme understand how that can be
(54:54):
improved?
Well, that's That's it very hardquestion because it is very
easy, as I mentioned before, tobe complacent, to take the easy
road, and just kind of followwhere people are leading you
and, and not learn. So you haveto develop an attitude of being
(55:18):
unhappy of being aware of thefact of how dumb you are, and
what have you learned things.
But if they just think about,when you have those three
stations, you didn't have muchchoice. So we do two or three, a
few occasions, my wife and I sitdown to watch television, we
have Wi Fi the last time Ilooked at my spark TV, there
(55:46):
were at least 10 differentchannels, we look at each of
which has 1000s of selections ofwhat to do. Well, if you think
it's easy to do that. You're alot smarter than I am. So we are
being challenged all the time,if we allow ourselves to be
challenged. And I must say thatit's very easy to get into
(56:09):
complacency and just float. Andone of the easy things you could
do is just turn the TV on andwatch whatever pops up. And
there are people that do that.
And they are living in a virtualworld all the time. And I agree
with you. They are not growing,they are moving backwards and
(56:30):
blurting stuff. So I wouldsuggest that everybody is
adapting to the modern worldproperly. I think our
educational system is at leastthe old part of it is archaic.
The system of giving lecturesoccurred a couple of 100 years
(56:53):
ago, it was started by the, thewhoever the head of Austria was,
and his only purpose was tocreate soldiers to who would
follow orders so that he couldmaintain the security of his
country. And somehow for 200years, we've maintained the same
(57:14):
thing. When I was a kid inCanada, and we started out the
day singing God save the king.
And which tells you how old Iwas, by the way. I know how old
Queen Elizabeth is. And then wemoved to the states and things
didn't change. We just sayingthe pledge of allegiance or God
(57:35):
bless America. No, it wasn't itwas the Star Spangled Banner. So
they, their educational systemof giving people electors is
passe. Fortunately, there are alot of schools now that are
(57:56):
taking the high road, as theyare getting people to engage
with each other, as they aresolving problems. They are
challenging children as they areletting them learn by themselves
all day long. Because if theyrun into a problem, they do it
we do somebody's use the wordthat they don't know you look it
(58:18):
up. You can't do that unless youhave full time connection to the
internet. So I don't know how Igot off on this tangent. But
we'll hop back to my optimism.
Does it involve everybody but itshould. Then part of that is our
educational system. And part ofthe problem there as well. We
(58:42):
got teachers unions, and butwe're not going to get into the
politics at this moment. Changeis important. And anything in
our society that mitigateschange, that keeps people in a
rut is bad. And change ispainful. But very important to
(59:04):
you know, grow your mind withoutgoing through those things.
Well, one thing came to my mind.
About 15 minutes back and we'retalking about how do you tap it
tap into your your creativity orforce yourself to be looking at
things Buckminster Fuller wassupposed to have ever said I
read it somewhere. Every time hewent to an airport or was coming
(59:28):
in or is going out. He goes tothe magazine rack. And he would
always suppose like pick the topright hand corner. It didn't
matter what magazine it was, buthe felt that he would read it
from cover to cover. And thatwas one of the ways that
stimulated him to come up withall kinds of different ideas.
And another topic because youknow a might have been reading
(59:52):
an art magazine on nursing ormedical or other medical or
engineering or automobiles, itdidn't really matter to him all
it mattered was that heembarrassed embrace something
that was completely new to him.
And it gave him the opportunityto, to practice and relate to
(01:00:12):
the other things that he wasdoing.
Using because among thepublications that I read as the
economist, and it's very easy tostart to pick up the economist,
for a given week, and just startgoing through every page. And of
course, when you do that, youspend hours and hours. And it's
(01:00:36):
always interesting. But yourealize that you are, you're not
living in the real world whenyou do that. But I learned of
all kinds of stuff that I wouldnever be exposed to otherwise so
severely that, once again, youhave to plan to balance. My
(01:00:57):
solution to their problems iscalled the cake table of
contents. I know look at thetable of contents, you can pick
and choose, pick and choose as Ido that, with the Wall Street
Journal, the New York Times. Ihope I'm still learning all the
time. ButI don't want to I don't want to
(01:01:18):
leave this for almost an hour,one minute or two minutes over.
But I would like to give Jamesat least two questions with us,
because he'll he'll hurt uslater, because he didn't get a
chance to answer questions.
James, thank you, Mark, I reallyappreciate it. You know, Marty,
honestly, I did have a wholebunch of questions. And I was,
(01:01:42):
it really got me thinking abouthow much the cellphone has
impacted my life. And I don'twant to sound like somebody
who's going to start on a bigstory. But I just there, there
was at least five ways in whichI could see that, that this
invention just totally changedthe way I live. And, and that's,
(01:02:03):
but the fact is, I came inmainly obsessed with all the
negative ways. And, and we had avery brief conversation before
it started, I don't even thinkyou're speaking directly to me,
but it totally elevated myconsciousness around this idea
and took me from kind of havinga negative outlook to a positive
(01:02:26):
outlook. And so now I'm sort ofblank on the whole issue, which
I'm very grateful for, because Ithink I was falling into that
comfortable cynicism, whichallows you to not have to think
anymore. And you've, you know,activated me to start thinking
differently about it, which isgoing to improve the plasticity
of my brain, I'm pretty sure.
(01:02:49):
James, I have to tell you, firstof all, people were skeptics are
very important in our culture,for every 100 ideas, of maybe
one of them is worth pursuing,who is going to shut down the
other 90 days. So somebody'sgonna be skeptical. And you, you
(01:03:10):
should not change your attitude.
But just think about cellphones, in the sense of we use
it today, which is really thesmartphone is only 15 or 20
years old, that's half ageneration, it's going to take
generations to really understandhow this tool should really be
(01:03:31):
used and to evolve it, includinggetting good artificial
intelligence, and all the thingswe talked about earlier. So
we're just in the early days,and yes, there are gonna be
things that we're doing wrong.
Things that are, you know, howelse can we get to improve if we
(01:03:51):
don't make mistakes? So we got along ways to go. And I don't
suggest that the cell phone isby any means perfect today. In
fact, far from it. I think weengineers have a lot to do to to
make the cell phone reallyuseful, and to solve all the
(01:04:12):
problems of the world today. Andboy, do we know how many
problems we got bright talkabout what's going on to the
Ukraine, the poverty in inplaces like India and Africa,
India, especially going to pickon you the fact that here you
(01:04:32):
got a country of super contrast,right? The most advanced
technologies that are beingpursued in India and the poorest
people are living by contrast,and we ought to be working on so
thank God for the skeptics don'tchange.
That's kind of you but I wouldlike to close by saying that it
(01:04:55):
really has created a paradigmshift, you know, and in our or
culture and, and that there'salways reactions against any
kind of paradigm shift. Andusually they take a lot longer
to have an impact and thecellphone, it really was, you
know, I used to work inadvertising and I got to work
with a GT mobile net account.
And I remember, you know, havingto learn about packet data, and
(01:05:18):
all that, you know, PDA and CDMAand all that stuff. That was a
convergent technologies tryingto, you know, figure out who's
the beta and who's the VHS. And,you know, it helped me feed my
kids and make a living and doall kinds of things, you know,
the, this this device, and just,and I was just a marketing
(01:05:41):
person, but I do remember, I gotto get involved with the cell
phone before everybody had one.
There was a time when ourmarketing revolved around
convincing people that this wasa device you needed to have,
which now is, is would beridiculous. You know, people
want it way before their way outahead of you as far as their
(01:06:04):
desire for the device. But therewas a time when people didn't
know how bad they, they wantedthis. And so it was a lot of
fun. Getting involved in theearly days, I think I had one of
the first people who decidedthat they needed cell phones
were real estate people. Andit's very easy to understand
(01:06:27):
why. Because a real estateperson could only do two things,
they could be showing a home tosomebody, or they could be at
their office when somebodycalled looking for a new home.
And so if a cell phone allowedthem to do both at the same
time, doubled theirproductivity. So they were the
first people who really latchedon to the software as a tool.
(01:06:52):
The ones who were the worst waswere lawyers. Because they were
gonna you know, I don't know ifnone of you are lawyers, right.
So we could insult lawyers. Butlawyers tend to be arrogant
because they know all everythingabout the law, and none of the
rest of us do. And the lawyersthat say we don't need cell
(01:07:12):
phones, or the cell phone willnever be popular device for
society. So it took it took awhile. But that is the most
important thing, cell phones, dothey improve all of our
productivity and our safety, andlots of other things. So I don't
(01:07:33):
have to sell that to this group.
I could tell You're all noddingyour head, except I Jerry's not
because we know about codons.
They're all very numbersoriented. Don't really have any
imagination, right?
That's absolutely true thatwe're very, very linear. Between
(01:07:54):
center directors do we hit awall? That's pretty much
all I do this prove that Jerryhas got a great setting over and
he's open minded. And humble, ontop of all of
what, what Jerry didn't tell youwas that he's a fairly
substantial part of hispractices, business management,
and the man is had some reallyfamous people he's, he's he's
(01:08:18):
very humble about the fact thathis client bases as celebrity
oriented. He's always a geniusin his own right. So
well, it's a pleasure. Pleasure.
Thanks. Thank you.
Okay, Deepak did you want to doa question?
(01:08:38):
No, I mean, this point what whatgets you all excited about the
world in general? Nottechnology. There's this was
I'm sorry, do you see what getsme?
Yeah, gets you excited aboutwhat related issues good or bad,
(01:09:03):
but not not technologyspecifically, but
just you know, I, I have onegreat grandchild, and two more
on the way. So I want you toknow that family is a huge issue
is the if you haven't figured itout now it's people in general.
(01:09:28):
I really do believe that.
Everybody that I beat hassomething to teach me. I don't
have to like them all. Butbelieve it or not, I tend to
like almost everybody. You know,I have to make an exception for
for James, but you know, anybodythat's got long hair like that
can't be normal. Other Otherthan that, I really like all of
(01:09:49):
you guys. So it's very easy forme to be positive. Yes. I can't
do that as well. Yeah.
Did you find that, you know,passing values, your values
(01:10:12):
right? To two generations downthree generations down? Both
come easy based on yourinteraction with your family
members. You see, you see thathappening?
Well, you know, I can't I justcan't tell that because because
if you haven't figured out bynow I really don't like to give
(01:10:38):
advice, because I don't know ifI'm better than other people.
But the one of the my favoritethings to do is to talk to
children's classes. In fact, Ijust did that. Last week, I was
invited to high school and talkto a bunch of people, most of
(01:10:58):
whom were Latinos, in highschool here in San Diego. And
it's a thrill to see these kids,they're listening, and asking
good questions. And the, I'veonly mentioned Latinos, because
(01:11:19):
somehow or other in theirculture, they tend to be a
little shy. But so I talked forabout an hour, trying to get
them stimulated. And finally weended up editing this thing. And
they invited everybody to comeup and talk to me personally.
And 100% of these kids camedashing up. And everyone wanted
(01:11:44):
to talk and get again, they wereall excited there was more
important than anything I said,during that previous hour. So I
really do enjoy, I lovechildren, and I enjoy
interacting with them. And Ihave a few what do you what do
you call somebody who isfollower? Count anyway, I have a
(01:12:12):
few youngsters that I work withon a continuing basis. And maybe
they will learn something new.
But I have to tell you that theyteach me more than than I teach
them. And by the way, that'strue of this whole session. You
guys are unaware of the factthat a lot of things that we did
(01:12:32):
talked about in a way I expressmyself were different than I
have ever done before. Becauseeach of you stimulated that and
I'm grateful for that. And toyou Mark for inviting me to
come.
Oh, thanks, Marty. And a matterof fact, you are in the future
because that's one of thequestions we always ask people
(01:12:53):
at the end of these is that wasthere something about the
particular interaction that thatstimulated, you are interested
you are you know, whatever, andso you do live in the future. My
question already. Thank you verymuch. My pleasure.
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