Fall 2021 Hallene Lecture
Wednesday, October 13, 2021 | 4:00-5:15 pm CT
Alice Campbell Alumni Center
Reception follows the lecture
Ron Marquardt
Vice President of Advanced Technologies & Innovation
T-Mobile
Innovation is fundamentally important to most corporate endeavors but it represents a conundrum for many large enterprises. It cannot be held to a schedule, it does not promise the CFO a quarterly ROI, and no organization can lay claim to it as monopoly. But the success of corporations over the long-term requires continual innovation and re-invention: of products, processes, markets, and more. Innovation is ever-changing, organic, and essential, but requires patient cultivation to foster shoots of promise, and continual care to keep the necessary operations of a business from trampling on its roots. Essentially, innovation succeeds only under the proper conditions; it requires innovation gardeners to nurture ideas to maturity.
In this lecture, we’ll review some of T-Mobile’s technology and product innovation efforts – internal, as well as with partners large and small. Success requires intelligence in both the technical and business domains, political adroitness, and no small dose of humility. Interspersed with the efforts themselves, anecdotes shaping the path taken along our journey will be discussed, and through them the life of innovation gardeners amidst their success and failure is explored.
As vice president of advanced technologies & innovation for T-Mobile, Dr. Ron Marquardt is responsible for the exploration of new and enabling technologies, partnerships with business leaders in new categories of products and services, and the related industry relationships and investments enabling T-Mobile’s technology, innovation, and ecosystem development goals. Previously, he held a similar role at Sprint before the companies merged. Prior roles include VP of Technology Development at Clearwire Corporation and chief technology officer at Covad Communication.
He is the chair of the Board of Advisors for the Institute for Data Intensive Research in Astrophysics & Cosmology (DiRAC) at the University of Washington, and he sits on the Board of Advisors of Nok Nok Labs.
He received his bachelor’s degree in physics from MIT and his master’s degree and PhD in applied physics from Caltech. He is an alumnus of the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
