How to Take an Entrepreneurial Approach in an Age of Disruption

Businesses need to think in an entrepreneurial way, David McCourt, CEO of Granahan McCourt Capital told the audience at LeadersIn Broadband.

"Almost everything globally in business used to be about incremental change. Then along came Google, Facebook, eBay, AirBnB and the like and they blew up the model and took a whole new entrepreneurial approach," he said.

He described the entrepreneurial approach he took in telecoms, from telecom companies to data centre businesses from Europe to Mexico."

"All of those were startups competing with incumbents with 100% market share. We were fighting for 2.5% marketing share, but we were the only ones doing it. Now the incumbents, in Germany, UK, Ireland, are at about 40% and an average of 100 companies taking 60% market share."

McCourt said open-access wholesale business taking on the monopolies in a different way. "You have to build a future-proof, very robust network to do that, driven by video content."

It used to take 18 months to two years to syndicate content across TV networks, he said. "Now content created on a smartphone can be shared globally in minutes."

He described the opportunity in content was to teach people how to teach local communities to make "BBC quality content at YouTube prices".

"You cannot wait for regulators to make things happen. They are always behind. If you wait for regulators to show you how to build your business you will be too late," he said.
He advised that business should focus on three areas:

1. Wholesale open-access networks
2. The expansion of the distance between device and fibre connection. He said: "The further we can make that go the better we can serve the 5 billion undeserved people in the world."
3. Crowdsourcing content: "Teaching people how to produce BBC quality at YouTube price."