Telcordia at 25

“We’re pretty proud of being a research organization that has gone from being a cost center to generating a profit at this point,” Drobot said.

The challenge for Telcordia is to maintain that aggressive, forward-looking stance. At Bellcore, much of the research was around physical devices. That changed under the leadership of George Heilmeier who retired in 1997. “It went from [devices] being 80 percent of the research to mostly software and IP, and as it turns out that was the right direction because that’s the way the world has moved,” Drobot said. In fact, he said, “Without beating the drum or looking for credit, a lot of what goes as the modern IP world was created by these folks.”

The company has more than 1,800 patents and has published many peer-reviewed papers. It was instrumental in the creation of asymmetric DSL, invented SONET technology, helped develop the call agent architecture used in softswitches, enabled local number portability and led the development of many technology standards. But these accomplishments are not just the tradition of the old Bellcore. In the last couple of years Telcordia has done almost as many patent disclosures as Bellcore did in its peak years.

To put change over the last 25 years in perspective, Drobot noted that 25 years ago 8GB of storage would have cost a million dollars and taken up a small warehouse; today it fits on an iPhone. Twelve years ago, it would have cost $60,000 dollars and been the size of a refrigerator. And over this quarter century the industry has built out six national networks and erected 280,000 cell towers.

“I know of no industry that has re-invented itself to this depth in this short a period of time,” Drobot said. “And despite what the economy may do over the next couple of years, the technology trends that underlie this industry are still growing at an exponential rate. I don’t think they’ll do that for the next 25 years, but certainly for the next decade.”

For all its remarkable history, Telcordia has a relative newbie at the helm. CEO Mark Greenquist joined the company in 2005, serving as its CFO. He did likewise at Symbol Technologies and Agere Systems and is probably glad he is not still at General Motors today. And while he doesn’t share a history with his employees, he said he appreciates and values the contributions they have made and will continue to make to the company and the industry.

“It takes a long time to deeply understand the technology and complexity of this industry,” Greenquist said. “I am always impressed by what our folks can bring to the customer when we engage to solve a problem. The more we accentuate that, the better we’ll do.”

Greenquist hopes to instill a stronger sense of urgency within the company to dispel perceptions that it is long in the tooth. “I have no doubt about our ability to add value to the industry, but what long-term players like ourselves need to come to grips with is how speed has become such a big factor. That’s a culture change that needs to continue in all companies across the industry,” he said.

To maintain his company’s deep domain expertise while putting a little more spring in its step, Greenquist wants to make sure he’s mixing it up. In other words, new employees and employees with more entrepreneurial experience work alongside those with the domain expertise.

“It gives us the right mix of people to best engage our customers,” Greenquist said. “It’s tricky, and it doesn’t always work, but you can’t be successful with one or the other. You have to have both.”

This is part of Greenquist’s managed evolution approach. If successful, Telcordia can avoid the evolutionary dead end of some of its competitors.