Used to be if you wanted to enter the world of cloaks and daggers, you would try to be recruited by the CIA, or join the FBI, Interpol or another agency involved in espionage.
Now if you want to play James Bond, simply get a job in the wireless telecom industry. There is plenty of Top Secret work in a variety of companies, each trying to figure out the competition’s next step, as well as trying to implement their own strategies. (Well, OK. It’s not quite James Bond. He gets awesome sports cars, a sophisticated wardrobe, gets to travel the world, oftentimes to less-developed areas, and a ton of new gadgets. … Wait a minute. It is like Bond, at least the gadget part.)
But Bond aside, the fevered pitch of competition in the industry is driving all this covert action.
Palm Inc. is so concerned about potential competition to its line of handheld computers from Microsoft Corp. that the company actually has an employee with the title of chief competitive officer, according to a story in The Wall Street Journal. His job essentially is to make sure Palm handhelds stay a few steps ahead of Microsoft’s handhelds.
If you’re looking for a new title, that one sounds much better than the usual titles in wireless (i.e., chief senior manager of product distribution services information for the Northwest Region, wireless.)
But like many covert actions, the wireless industry’s cloak-and-dagger trend can get a little messy, especially when loyalties are only to companies, not queens.
The Denver Rocky Mountain News last week reported a dispute between Qwest Communications and AT&T Corp. Qwest is trying to hire a former AT&T employee, but AT&T has said it would sue Qwest and the employee if he is hired because AT&T is concerned the employee would disclose confidential information and trade secrets from AT&T to Qwest. (And a lawsuit against this employee is going to help stop him from divulging information? I guess the analogy about catching more flies with honey than vinegar has no place in the corporate world.)
I hope it is as easy to distinguish the bad guys from the good in the wireless industry as it is in the movies. Perhaps the good guys should all wear tuxedos like Bond.
The cloak-and-dagger routine will only get more interesting as the wireless industry matures. After all, each wireless company and 007 have one thing in common: They both believe “The world is not enough.”
