Anthropological Customer Vision

“It's your job [as a businessperson] to think almost anthropologi- cally about humanity and say, "What would be in their best inter- est?" And then try to get there first, and know that eventually they'll learn what you have is worth their while. If I ever got a vision in business it was that, the Field of Dreams mentality, and that's how I've really operated in my career. I've never worried whether somebody else thought it was the right thing. If I believed it was the right thing, then I was prepared to build it and hoped that "they would come" based upon [the fact that] if I were that person and I were in their circumstances, that I would appreciate”

“e^nTalicryou see an opportunity—a gap between what is anct\ what should be. If one thinks in anthropological terms, if you go \ towards what should be, then eventually things will get there and you/ just have to work out the timing," McCaw says: With cellular telephony, in particular, we saw an enormous gap between what was and what should be. I mean, [the fixed phone system] makes absolutely no sense. It is machines dominating human beings. The idea that people went to a small cubicle, a six- by-ten office, and sat there all day at the end of a six-foot cord was anathema to me. If one thing is obvious, people will pay, will contribute something for control of their lives, the right to choose. And I think if we saw anything in cellular telephone, it was that people were being subjugated needlessly to 1890s technology.”