We were impressed last year when we reported our survey showing that two-thirds of the GTB 40 under 40 for 2010 had already set up their own companies. Now, we show that last year’s results were no fluke: this year’s 40 — who have a certain amount of overlap with the 2010 list — are just as enterprising.
The full list of the GTB 40 under 40 for 2011 was published in the May-June printed issue of Global Telecoms Business and online here. All of them have been invited to a conference and awards ceremony in London in September — and all but two have accepted the invitation. The two omissions have work commitments which do not allow them to come.
Franco Bernabè, the chairman of the GSM Association and the CEO and chairman of Telecom Italia, is attending the summit to present the awards to the 40.



This year’s survey, based on an online survey of the 40, show that 63% have already set up a company in their career so far.
Most of the others plan to set up, or help set up, a company during their career. Only 10% say they have no plans to do so.
Of those who have yet to help set up a company, the key timeframe is 2012-16, when one in six of the total aim to achieve this target.



We also asked the 40 when they expect to become a C-level executive. Fully half of the 40 say they already are, or already have been, a CEO, CFO, CTO, COO or similar — roughly the same, given the uncertainties of sampling, as last year’s total.
Of the other half, most are confident that the will achieve this career goal in the 2012-16 interval: a third of the 40 in all. And one of the 40 said that he or she — we promised confidentiality, so we won’t say who it is — will achieve C-level status before the end of 2011.
And, though 10% of our young achievers say they don’t expect to help set up a company, none of the 40 reported that they don’t expect to be a C-level executive. All of this year’s crop of executives are confident that they will achieve such a senior position.

Our GTB 40 under 40 are well educated — perhaps better educated than their 2010 peers. This year, 97% have a first degree, up on last year’s 92% (but remember the warning about sampling error).


More than half studied science (13%) or technology (40%) at first-degree level, with the rest divided fairly equally — and below the meaning of sampling error — between arts, business, finance, languages and marketing/sales.
No one admitted to being a lawyer this year, as last year: an intriguing result, given the number of lawyers who seem to be in senior roles in large telecoms companies today.



More than two thirds of the GTB 40 under 40 for 2011 have a master’s degree, of whom about half have a master’s in business administration — slightly more than last year’s total.



Another 10% of the 40 expect to get an MBA before 2016, but more than 50% of the total say they do not plan to study for an MBA — again, very much in line with the 2010 results. How important, one wonders, is an MBA to senior management in telecoms?
Moving companies is often a key element in an executive’s personal career plan, so we asked our 40 a couple of questions designed to show how long they are likely to stay in one company. We emphasised to them that these questions — like all the others — were completely confidential, so we will not reveal more than general numbers. 



The figures show that a fraction over a quarter of our 40 have remained with one company for the past 10 years. About the same number have worked for two, and around 36% have worked for three. Some have worked for four or five.
That result fits reasonably well with the answers to the next question, on how long people expect to stay with their current company.



About 57% plan to stay one, two or three years only — with almost half that total expecting to stay no more than two years. But at the same time a full 30% expect to stay with their current company for five years or more.
On top of that, about 10% preferred not to say, despite our promises of confidentiality.

We asked the GTB 40 under 40 which operators they thought would be most influential in 2016 — including companies that offer fixed or mobile services or both. We worded the question poorly, as a few thought that we were asking whether they admired fixed operators more than mobile, or the other way round.



We wanted names, and most provided them. We gave three points for each first place, two for each second and one for each third.
Top of the list for most influential companies was Vodafone (and this is from a list of 40 with only one Vodafone executive in it, so there is no bias towards employers). Vodafone won the vote by a huge margin.
China Mobile was number two in the list — voted for by 40 executives none of whom work for that company. Vodafone and China Mobile were numbers one and two in 2010 as well.
Bharti Airtel bettered its 2010 position of tenth equal and came third in 2011. Google was fourth, as it was last year, followed by AT&T and then Telefónica.
The operators that featured in this year’s top 10 also appeared last year, though in different orders — except that MTN last year shared 10th place with Bharti Airtel: an interesting consistency in the result.



We did a similar exercise for vendors the GTB 40 under 40 thought would be most influential in 2016, applying the same scoring system and ignoring the handful of spurious results caused by the apparently vague form questioning.
A couple of people, oddly, named Facebook as a vendor, but that aside, Huawei was far and away the winner among the GTB 40 under 40 for 2011, followed by Apple and then — though it is not strictly a vendor at the time of the survey, which was before the Motorola Mobility deal was announced — Google, the only company to score as an operator and a vendor. There was another a vote for Google’s Android operating system, but we decided that was too vague to allocate to Google itself.
Oracle was the fourth most admired vendor, closely followed by Ericsson and Cisco in equal fifth place, and then Samsung and IBM in equal seventh, with Alcatel-Lucent and ZTE in equal ninth.
Below that, the results were not statistically significant, given that we asked only 40 people to vote. Most of the well known vendors — of hardware and software appeared somewhere in the list, though there were one or two intriguing omissions, companies on the hardware and handset side that received no votes.
We will be carrying out a further survey of the GTB 40 under 40 summit on their view of the key issues facing the industry over the next few years. We will report the results in September. GTB