1M Research examines why the same change succeeds in one enterprise and stalls in another, and what that means for the companies that sell to them. The change can be a new technology, an operating model, a metric, a structure or a go-to-market motion. Its results rarely come from the change alone. They come from the intertwined ecosystem it enters: the culture, technology, metrics, processes, talent and structure of the organization, and the partners and markets around it, which shape the change and are reshaped by it in turn.
Two operators can make the same move, whether a new platform, a reorganization or a new set of targets, and get opposite results. One connects it to the decision rights, processes, incentives, skills and partners that let it count. The other drops it into an organization that pulls it back toward the old way of working. The move is the same in both cases; what differs is whether the organization, and the ecosystem around it, carries it. 1M Research traces that difference: where value is created, where it stalls, who controls the gates it passes through, and what leaders can change.
The writing is for executive teams and for the leaders who own strategy, technology, transformation and growth in telecom and hi-tech, including CEOs, CIOs, CTOs and Chief Digital Officers. It is also for the marketing and go-to-market leaders who have to make an offer matter to a buyer. New Counterpoints, Points of View, Deep Dives, Best Practices and Predictions appear periodically, alongside Signals, a digest of what mattered, and short Field Notes.
Every piece names its sources, keeps what was observed apart from what is inferred, and ends with what follows for a decision.
Who is behind it
Mentor Cana, PhD, founded 1M Research and writes or directs everything on it.
His career has followed technology from the network to the boardroom. He began in engineering and architecture at Bellcore, Telcordia, IBM and AT&T, learning how networks and systems are built and where they break. At Microsoft he was a senior solutions architect for telecom, media and high-tech clients, turning platforms into business outcomes. Over eleven years at Gartner, rising to Vice President Strategist and Analyst, he ran the telecom and high-tech research agenda, published more than 110 reports that informed strategic planning at the top 30 global telecom and high-tech providers, and advised executives in 200 to 250 sessions a year. He then advised on product management strategy at Dell Technologies and led the technology, media and telecom sector at Moody’s Analytics, working with CIOs, CTOs and the marketing and sales organizations that take technology to market.
His academic training and his industry work have shaped each other throughout. Engineering taught him what a technology can do. Information science, which studies how information, technology, people and institutions shape one another, taught him why the same change succeeds in one setting and stalls in another, and how to test that explanation against evidence. The industry, in turn, gave that research its questions and its proving ground, so the analysis holds up to scrutiny and still tells an executive what to do next.
Mentor holds a PhD in Information Science from Rutgers University, an MS in Electrical and Telecommunication Engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology, and a BS in Electrical Engineering from SUNY New Paltz.
Why 1M Research
I started 1M Research to write the analysis I kept wanting to read. Most advice treats a change and the organization around it as two separate questions: first what the new technology, process or operating model can do, then how to get people to adopt it. In practice they shape each other. A change becomes valuable only when the culture, processes, metrics, structures, skills and partners around it make it count, and it changes all of them in turn.
That is why a pilot that worked so often stalls at scale, and why the same move sets one firm apart and quietly becomes a cost in another. The writing here follows that thread from the question to the decision it bears on.
If a piece here bears on a decision you are facing, or you see it differently, get in touch.