Wolter Lemstra - The Innovation Journey of Wi-Fi. The Road to Global Success [2011][A]

Book Description
Publication Date: December 27, 2010
Wi-Fi has become the preferred means for connecting to the internet - at home, in the office, in hotels and at airports. Increasingly, Wi-Fi also provides internet access for remote communities where it is deployed by volunteers in community-based networks, by operators in 'hotspots' and by municipalities in 'hotzones'. This book traces the global success of Wi-Fi to the landmark change in radio spectrum policy by the US FCC in 1985, the initiative by NCR Corporation to start development of Wireless-LANs and the drive for an open standard IEEE 802.11, released in 1997. It also singles out and explains the significance of the initiative by Steve Jobs at Apple to include Wireless-LAN in the iBook, which moved the product from the early adopters to the mass market. The book explains these developments through first-hand accounts by industry practitioners and concludes with reflections and implications for government policy and firm strategy.

Reviews
"The Innovation Journey of Wi-Fi: The Road to Global Success involves almost a score of contributors, including many influential voices in the Wi-Fi world ... It collects and preserves several great ideas, stitching them together in one place. That makes the gems accessible, turning them into something very useful for many readers. It should become a focal point for all subsequent developments."Shane Greenstein, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, Computing Now

"Participants in a historical watershed such as the development of Wi-Fi wireless systems rarely write a concise, readable account of what happened. But Lemstra, Hayes, Groenewegen (all, Delft Univ. of Technology, Netherlands), and other contributors to this carefully edited volume have done exactly that ... Unusual in an edited volume, the style is consistently clear throughout. While not every reader will benefit from every chapter, there is enough in this work to please technologists, historians, business and economics specialists, and the general reader who wants to know where Wi-Fi came from. Summing up: highly recommended."K. D. Stephan, Texas State University-San Marcos, Choice

About the Authors
Wolter Lemstra is Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Technology, Policy and Management at the Delft University of Technology (TUDelft) and Senior Lecturer at the Strategy Academy, The Netherlands. He has twenty-five years of experience in the telecom sector, at Philips, AT&T and Lucent Technologies.
Vic Hayes is Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Technology, Policy and Management at the Delft University of Technology (TUDelft), The Netherlands. He is the recipient of eight awards, including The Economist Innovation Award 2004, the Dutch Vosko Trophy, the IEEE Hans Karlsson Award, and the IEEE Steinmetz Award.
John Groenewegen is Professor of the Economics of Infrastructures at the Delft University of Technology (TUDelft), The Netherlands. He is also a research fellow at the Tinbergen Institute (TI) in the Rotterdam School of Economics, Erasmus University Rotterdam.