Articles

Integrity > Innovation

Do you believe great innovation is about brilliance?

A single spark… a genius in a garage… a new way to connect the world?
Maybe innovation isn’t just about what we build… it’s about what we choose to share?
That’s what I kept thinking while editing this week’s Thinking With Mitch Joel conversation with Rouzbeh Yassini-Fard… the engineer often called the father of the cable modem.

He didn’t just change how we connect… he changed what connection means.

When Rouzbeh developed the first broadband technology, he could have done what so many tech innovators do: lock it down, own the patents and build a kingdom on top of his cables and tech.
Instead, he made a different kind of decision.
He made it open.
He shared the standard so others could build upon it.
He gave up control so the rest of us could gain access.

It wasn’t a technical choice… it was a moral one with just enough business acumen to make it sustainable.

Because when you give technology away, you’re not just creating an industry… you’re creating a commons.
And commons don’t make billionaires… they make civilizations.
And that’s what true innovation does… it changes everything that comes after.
That’s the quiet paradox at the heart of progress: the technologies that truly transform society are rarely the ones that were designed to dominate it.

We don’t remember (or love) who built the walls… we remember (and love) who opened the gates.

Rouzbeh’s story made me wonder how many of today’s founders would make the same decision?
Would they share the code?
Would they choose the network over the net worth?

It seems like most of our modern systems reward ownership, not openness.

There was a different spirit in the early days of connectivity… that seems to have been lost.
I get it… mature markets… big money… power…
We’ve turned innovation into a race for patents, valuations and market share.
Remember when OpenAI was a nonprofit to ensure that AI benefits everyone?
Somewhere along the way, we lost sight of what technology was also supposed to be: an act of generosity, not extraction.

It’s important to remember that every invention carries a moral fingerprint.

It says something about the kind of future its creator believes in.
It says something about the kind of culture and humanity the recipients of the technology become.
And maybe that’s the question we should be asking of every breakthrough… not just what does it do? but who does it serve?

We need to remember this… and think about it more.

Rouzbeh’s decision to give away this technology sparked the broadband wave that gave us the internet as we know it.
It also gave us a reminder: technology is not neutral.
Every wire and signal is a choice.
Innovation is easy… integrity is rare (and, it’s also ok to make a lot of money while having that integrity at the same time).

Innovation is everything… but remembering whether we’re inventing things that serve humanity or just ourselves… that’s everything too.

Before you go… ThinkersOne is a new way for organizations to buy bite-sized and personalized thought leadership video content (live and recorded) from the best Thinkers in the world. If you’re looking to add excitement and big smarts to your meetings, corporate events, company off-sites, “lunch & learns” and beyond, check it out.

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.