OREANDA-NEWS. November 15, 2013. Verizon Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Lowell McAdam says that the world is just at the beginning of a revolutionary new era in the history of communications and that countless life-changing solutions are waiting to be discovered.

McAdam made his comments while receiving the David Packard Medal of Achievement Award from TechAmerica at a reception in Menlo Park. McAdam was the 55th recipient of the award, which annually recognizes significant contributions to the advancement of the high-tech industry and for distinguished service.

“I’m fortunate that my career has coincided with one of the most sweeping technological revolutions that any industry has ever seen,” said McAdam. “We’re in a golden age of innovation.” But he noted that for all the technological tools built in the last 30 years, “the challenge for the next 30 years is to leverage the power of these tools to raise living standards and transform societies in ways we never dreamed of before.”

McAdam cited education, energy and healthcare as areas where Verizon is developing innovative ways to dramatically alter lives through technology. In education, he described how Verizon networks are reinventing the traditional bricks-and-mortar model and delivering better outcomes for underserved students. In energy, McAdam said machine-to-machine and cloud technology is creating smart grids that can lower emissions and reduce energy consumption. And in healthcare, Verizon’s 4G LTE and cloud network capabilities are being embedded in biometric devices and apps that significantly shorten the distance between patients and top doctors.

“The potential for this explosion of innovation to change society on a worldwide scale is immense,” said McAdam.

McAdam concluded by pointing out that even with the progress that has been made in the last few years, the potential for change is dramatic since 60 percent of the world’s population is not connected to the Internet, 80 percent lives on less than USD10 a day, and nearly a billion people are unable to read a book or sign their name.

“What really drives it home for me, and what gets me motivated to come to work every day, is the potential for technology to transform an individual life in a way that would have seemed miraculous just a year or two ago,” McAdam said.

To help spur further innovation, McAdam called for more collaboration in the larger tech industry. To encourage this, in January McAdam created the Powerful Answers Award, a competition that awards USD 10 million in prizes for apps that use Verizon’s network assets to create new solutions in healthcare, energy and education. The winners will be announced at CES 2014 in January.

TechAmerica (www.techamerica.org) is the leading association for the U.S. technology industry, representing premier technology companies of all sizes. The Medal of Achievement award honors those who have shaped the U.S. technology industry and greatly contributed to the global leadership position enjoyed by the industry.

Previous winners include: William Hewlett and David Packard of Hewlett Packard; Ross Perot of Electronic Data Systems; Thomas J. Watson Jr. of IBM; Gordon Moore, Paul S. Otellini and Andrew Grove of Intel; John W. Thompson of Symantec; Ray Lane of Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers; and the 2012 recipient, Reid Hoffman of Greylock Partners and co-founder of LinkedIn.