Making a Connection

Anthony A. Lewis

Title: Vice President of Open Development Initiatives

Location: Basking Ridge, N.J.

Age: 46

Power Play: Lewis is responsible for executing Verizon’s open development initiative, which gives customers the option to use wireless devices, software, and applications not provided by Verizon on its nationwide wireless network. He is responsible for directing the pricing, activation, billing, distribution, device specification, testing, communications planning, and financial matters, as well as managing staff of nearly 100.

What’s your strategy for being innovative in an already established industry?
We recognized that the marketplace was saturated so we opened the network to unleash a new tidal wave of opportunity. When you have a market that’s penetrated, you have to step outside of the box

to not only think radically, but react radically. By July 2008, the first device under the Open Development program was certified. We’ve certified more than 100 devices through this new commercial model, with many more in the pipeline.

How do you use innovation to stay ahead of your competitors?
If you don’t innovate, you don’t grow. I mandate uncompromised focus on the customer needs, wants, and desires. We search for ideas that will affect the lives of our customers. We focus on sustainable growth. We seek out the best partners in every part of the wireless ecosystem. We understand there is a solution to every problem. We understand that we must set the tone for the dialogue–open, flexible, innovative devices and applications will have the best opportunity for success.

If you don’t think broadly enough, if you don’t look at every aspect and if you don’t partner, you can never take advantage of the full capabilities that innovative thought and work practices can give you.

What is your team’s process to best serve customers?
The process for innovation is not restricted to traditional meetings or brainstorming. These components exist, of course, and they can be helpful but they are not the answer. True innovation lies in tapping into the collective intelligence of the members of an ecosystem–and creating partnerships. That includes all of the internal teams but it may also include the work of others outside our core team.

This may sound

simplistic, but it really is this simple: I demand what my customers demand. I make it clear that we must excel within five attributes at all times. This is the baseline of requirements: a demonstration of integrity, urgency, action, accountability, and emotional intelligence. Innovation on a piece of paper is interesting, but what my customers require are the products and services that will enable them to live, work, and play however they choose. We innovate by listening; by understanding their needs; and by sharing ideas and quickly turning those ideas into action. Innovation lives and breathes and is a part of our daily work process–we do not turn it on and off, because we know that we innovate or we lose customers.

Why is innovation important to a person’s long-term career success?
The corporation has a strategy; I don’t have to invent that. What I have to do is take that core set of values and goals, and figure out how do I expand those? How do I capitalize on those? How do I ensure that I am maximizing what the corporation is expecting of me to a level that they would never imagine? That’s innovative thinking, which means to never stop thinking, never stop looking for the next opportunity, and never settling. That type of thinking will lead you to great career paths in any company.

This article originally appeared in the June 2010 issue of Black Enterprise magazine.