How Will Clearwire Replace its Innovators?
According to Scott Richardson, his departure Monday from the post of chief strategy officer for national WiMAX provider Clearwire was a pre-planned move, to kick-start some delayed plans for building a software startup. While his parting seems amicable and is draped with pledges to “keep helping them out,” it’s valid to ask at this point how much departures like Richardson’s will hurt Clearwire’s plans to build a national wireless network, plans which are only now starting to get underway.
Already this year, the Kirkland, Wash. company has changed CEOs, moving Ben Wolff into the cozy “co-chairman” chair in favor of the big-telco experience of new CEO Bill Morrow. While Morrow continues to build his own team — a work in progress that saw a CFO replacement Monday alongside a hire to sort-of replace Richardson’s strategic responsibilities — it’s becoming evident that Clearwire is placing a premium on big-company experience for its C-level newcomers, perhaps at the expense of startup-type enthusiasm that both Wolff and Richardson had in spades.
Maybe the big telco and operational experience is necessary, given the scale at which Clearwire hopes to grow its network and operations. Richardson, who said he had wanted to start a software company before kind of falling into his Clearwire gig in 2007, said he saw the company building rapidly into something that reminded him of his days leading big teams at Intel.
“I could see my team becoming four times the size it was now, in a short period of time,” Richardson said Monday in a quick phone chat. If he stayed while the company got bigger, Richardson said, “it would be harder to extract.” By leaving now, Richardson can start anew looking for opportunities in the mobile Internet software space, “something I originally wanted to do.”
The startup world’s gain, however, may be Clearwire’s loss, since more renegade thinking may be its best hope in competing against the largest service providers, namely the telephone companies. Richardson, who was a champion of innovative devices like the mobile Clear Spot Wi-Fi/WiMAX router, says he will stick around a bit to help Clearwire with its current game plan. The challenge will be for the new hires with big-company resumes to either deliver themselves or recognize innovators within, to replace the startup expertise that isn’t around anymore on a daily basis.
