CommScope’s Top 40 Innovations: The Unveiling Begins

A common thread in all the activities in which we’ve commemorated CommScope’s 40^th anniversary has been our special focus on the people and the innovation that have fueled our growth and success through the years.

It was an easy choice, really. So many thousands of talented, passionate people have left their mark on the company and essentially built the prominent position we hold today with customers and in the overall industry. And innovation—despite it being a buzzword of the tech and business world—is a core value and our fuel for future growth and success.

CommScope (and the companies acquired along the way) and its talented employees have made a meaningful, lasting impact on our industry and customers through inventions, new products, improved processes and technology breakthroughs. In our brainstorming and planning for the anniversary, an ambitious idea was surfaced that came to truly encapsulate the “people and innovation” focus of our celebration. In our 40^th year, let’s try to identify the 40 best and most impactful innovations that have come from CommScope or one of its acquired companies over the past 40 years. And let’s ask the global CommScope team to nominate innovations for consideration for this list.

And here we are today, ready to unveil our list of CommScope’s Top 40 Innovations after months of considerable debate by a multi-functional team within the company. Employees submitted nearly 150 suggestions for consideration, and I’m sure there are many that could have been considered that didn’t get nominated. Nonetheless, it was an impressive array of candidates from which to choose the Top 40. The group’s selections were based on: 

• Uniqueness to CommScope
• Positive effects on a customer or customers
• Level of technology breakthrough
• Demonstrated impact on marketplace
• Lasting impact on company and/or industry

As we unveil the list, we realize it isn’t perfect. It is highly subjective and likely will spark some debate and discussion, amongst employees and outside the company. But it also is a perfect way to illustrate innovation in action—actual examples of how creative thinking, new approaches, and even risk-taking can have a positive, lasting effect on a business, its customers and an entire industry.

Next week on this blog we will unveil the innovations that were ranked 21-40, in no particular order. (Innovations were not ranked in order; rather, the reviewers compiled a Top 40 list in three groupings: a top 10, innovations 11-20, and innovations 21-40. The review team decided to place them in three different groupings to keep the focus on the innovation versus where they are individually ranked.)

Then, beginning the week of November 14, each of the innovations in group 11-20 will be announced individually in a series of blog posts through early December, followed by the announcement of the Top 10 throughout the remainder of December and into January.

As our 40^th anniversary year draws to a close, we hope you enjoy looking back at what we think are our top innovations from the past 40 years—ones that have helped build the world’s infrastructure of today and tomorrow. Have an opinion or story about any of the innovations we reveal? Leave a comment below.

About the Author

Rick Aspan

Rick Aspan, APR, is vice president of Corporate Communications at CommScope. A former journalist, he has more than 25 years of experience in corporate communications functions in the telecom, internet and networking industries at companies such as MCI, Ameritech and Tellabs.