Greatest Impact for the Public We Serve?
Steve Mitnick is Editor-in-Chief of Public Utilities Fortnightly and President, Lines Up, Inc.
The three judges for this year's Fortnightly Top Innovators, Tom Flaherty of Strategy &/PwC, Morgan O'Brien of pdvWireless, and yours truly, based our favorites among the seventy-two qualifying nominations on the same criteria. Which achievements were the most unique, the most creative and the most impactful?
That doesn't mean our favorites were identical. It seemed to me that Tom, the uber strategist, leaned toward those nominations that were the most transformative for their companies. And it seemed that Morgan, a longtime telecom pioneer and leader, leaned towards those nominations that most vigorously pushed the digitalization envelope.
As for me, I was all about what nominated achievements promised the greatest impact for the public we serve. For utility customers, because of what a nominated individual or team had done, will their utility service be more reliable, more affordable, safer or cleaner for the environment? When I came across a nomination that moves the needle on one of more of those essential qualities of utility service — reliability, affordability, safety and environmentally-clean - I was all in.