Why Did Iridium Fail?
$5 Billion for Phones That Didn't Work Indoors
📜 What Happened
Motorola's Iridium launched 66 satellites for a global phone — engineering's Everest, conceived in 1987 when cellular was patchy. By its 1998 launch, GSM roaming covered the profitable world. The Iridium handset: $3,000, brick-sized, $7/minute — and needing line-of-sight to sky, it FAILED INDOORS AND IN CARS, where businesspeople live. It won 20,000 subscribers against a 500,000 break-even. Bankruptcy in nine months; the $5B constellation sold for $25M.
☠️ The Fatal Mistake
An 11-year build with no checkpoint asking 'is the problem still unsolved?' — the market moved; the plan, magnificently, didn't.
🧠 The Lesson (Free for You)
Long projects need scheduled kill-reviews against the CURRENT world, not the founding memo. Engineering achievement is not exempt from the question 'who still needs this?'
📕 The Antidote Book
Christensen's Harvard research began with a paradox: why do well-run market leaders — companies that listen to customers, invest in R&D, and chase profits rationally — get destroyed by scrappy newcomers with WORSE…
📖 OPEN THE FULL INTERACTIVE BREAKDOWN →Searchable, filterable, free to read — they paid billions; your lesson is free.