Connected Planet already has some strong connections with industry analyst firm New Paradigm Resources Group (NPRG): we share Chicago as our main office and earlier this year our former news editor, Ed Gubbins, took the leap to the firm as well. So it was with pleasure that I saw the news this week that a couple of industry leaders that I covered back several decades ago in my own first round at Telephony (which is now Connected Planet) had joined NPRG: Alfred Boschulte, former CEO of Nynex Wireless, and Victor Schnee, founder of Probe Research and co-author of the 1976 study, The Future of AT&T, which predicted the breakup of the Bell System (which eventually happened ten years later).
Schnee, in particular, was a big name — and big thinker — back when I started in this industry (not to mention that the first conference I ever attended was a Probe event in NYC on CDMA vs. TDMA wireless technologies, way back — if I remember correctly — in 1989).
I asked Craig Claussen, executive vice president of NPRG, about snagging this high-profile pair (who recently have worked together as Boschulte Schnee Group, LLC). According to Claussen, the duo will be ” examining emerging disruptors that will affect the broad communications industry.”
As for Schnee, Claussen said: “Victor’s landmark work on AT&T represents this type of work; he saw the trends and drivers coming together before others did and clearly laid-out the impacts (which also came to be).
“In part, what made Victor’s AT&T piece a ‘landmark,’” Claussen said, “was the prescience he showed and his willingness to put his thoughts out there. Victor didn’t set out to create a ’seminal’ piece; rather he set out to explore and explain what he saw unfolding that others either didn’t yet see or were choosing to turn a blind-eye to. This will be the thrust of the work we’ll be involved in on this front.”
We look forward to hearing more from all involved at NPRG.