170 Inverting the Paradox of Excellence
design with Motorola and operated his own wireless systems integration company, had already pub-
lished an article predicting the wireless PDA in the July 1991 issue of Communications Magazine.
In it, he laid out all the market potential and engineering challenges that had to be met before per-
fecting what he called the personal communicator, a handheld touch screen Mobitex device with
e-mail, computer bulletin board connectivity, and a way to manage your calendar, contact list, and
other personal data. Everyone else was trying to add a radio to a PDA, whereas Mike’s mind-set
was how to add a PDA to a radio. One isn’t going to beat everybody in every category, so he decided
that focus would be one of the ...