Beyond the Wireless Bubble

Orange discovered that customers were confused by the large number of pricing plans available. So it created a single structure with a small number of easily understandable rates and allowed customers to switch between them at will. Customers also moaned about being ripped off by companies whose policy it was to round a 15-second call up to a minute. So Orange introduced itemized, per-second billing -- a first for the wireless field. (Orange also claims to be the first to offer caller ID and the first to offer a free replacement service.) There were gripes about dealers and other middlemen who knew little about technology and even less about good service. So Orange created a single point of contact for its customers.

The unorthodox strategy worked. The company's London IPO, in 1996, gave it a market cap of $4 billion. Later that year, Orange was the youngest company ever to enter the FTSE 100 and the first to do so without having made a profit. More important, the company's churn rate -- the number of customers who quit the service -- was (and remains) half that of other UK networks.

The acquisition by France Telecom gives Orange the global clout that it needs to achieve its aim of becoming a significant presence in each of the world's top 50 markets for wireless by 2005. But that future presence, like the company's past success, will be driven as much by what makes Orange tick as by how well its phones work. "Your values need to be austere," says Hirschhorn. "At Orange, we picked just a few: dynamic, friendly, innovative, trustworthy. Those values create a framework that helps people understand us -- and they cross all cultural lines."

Imagineering the Future

The past can be a powerful source of inspiration for any company. But the past must never become a formula for repetition. In order to keep Orange moving forward, Hirschhorn has hired a team of what he calls "imagineers." ("Imagineering is R&D for the sake of human beings, not for the sake of technology," he says.) Their titles range from "ambassador of strategy" ("the right-brained thinkers") to "knowledge consul" ("the left-brained, facilitating people"). Collectively, they go to work under the banner of MIB ("managing integrated businesses"), and they rely on three crucial methods for creating and blending various competing strategies.

The first is what Hirschhorn calls the "Playground to the Stars": participating in and steering the strategic direction of Orange's most senior decision-making units, as well as driving the special projects of senior managers. Next up is "Constituency Maintenance": carrying messages to and from Orange's business groups, and acting as a catalyst for strategy development and as a bidirectional conduit of information. (Hirschhorn prefers to call this method "virtual handshaking.")

But at the center, quite literally, sits a think tank. Early on, Hirschhorn told Hans Snook, CEO of Orange, that if he wanted an organization that knew how to think, then he needed to create a physical think tank. So Orange built a circular room, which Hirschhorn has dubbed the Imaginarium, where the company's imagineers, ambassadors, and knowledge consuls play "What Happens Next?" The room has no desks, all of the computers in it are portable, music oozes out of air-conditioning ducts, and walls are fabricated from whiteboards.

So what are Hirschhorn and his people thinking about? New business models, for one thing. "There will be no need to meter calls or monitor airtime usage," predicts Hirschhorn. "The 'death of distance' in telephony means that a call from Rome to New York will cost about the same as a call across town. In the new paradigm, the revenue model is not about phone calls. It's about providing life services to our customers: whatever they want, wherever and however they want it -- everything from waking them up in the morning, monitoring their health, and controlling their diary, to providing them with entertainment, locating their children, and keeping watch over them while they sleep."

Hirschhorn also wants Orange to make lots of small bets, rather than one huge bet. There will be no killer app for wireless, he claims, because the number of possible uses for the technology is so vast. The challenge for companies like his is to explore many avenues to humanizing the Internet. One example: a 28-year-old, emerald-eyed, green-haired virtual newscaster who goes by the name of Ananova. ("Hello, world! Here is the news . . . and this time it's personal.") Confused? Orange has paid $137.5 million for the Press Association's digital news-feed technology, which includes the Ananova service and which gives wireless customers the chance to personalize their news bulletins. By entering a zip code, for example, users will be able to access items, such as weather and traffic updates, that are relevant to their particular region.