We’ve only just started exploring the potential of music on mobile phones. That might seem like an odd statement as playing and discovering music is well established on the phone. That’s not what I’m talking about. No, I’m suggesting that there’s huge untapped potential in creating music on phones.

At work, I’m involved in one of the most exciting technology-driven changes to our societies ever. At home, I’m a mother of a three-year-old daughter. There is a surprising similarity between these two experiences. Small children and technology never stay still for long, and both surprise you every day. Some surprises are good, some are less so, but it’s amazing to watch both a child and technology develop at a break-neck speed.

With more than 6 billion connections worldwide and US$1.3 trillion in annual revenue, mobile telephony has become the largest information and communication technology (ICT) platform in history. The global scale of mobile telephony and its economic impacts are well understood by industry participants and governments. However, we, at Qualcomm, envision that mobile broadband—with its ability to connect people to the Internet in an ultra-personal and pervasive manner—will have a far greater impact than what’s being realized today.

Many large companies in all fields struggle with innovation, as Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble point out in their excellent book 'The Other Side of Innovation: Solving the Executive Challenge’. Often for commercial reasons these companies have been built for efficiency, not constant change and experimentation. However, many board directors talk about the need for innovation within the company, while the middle-management are often more comfortable with – and often rewarded for – predictability and efficiency, rather than driving change.