As a scuba diver, I’ve always enjoyed watching waves.

From the shore they look chaotic. From the water they feel powerful. But spend enough time around them and you start to recognize patterns. Waves build slowly. They gather energy. They rise, break, and eventually become part of the landscape. Then another wave forms behind them.

This week in Amsterdam, I had the unusual opportunity to watch three different waves at once.

Over the course of a few days, I attended an MVNO Summit, joined a private dinner focused on identity and trust in the age of AI, and participated in the Cloud Communications Alliance European Summit. Three different audiences. Three different conversations. Three different industries.

Yet by the end of the week, I realized they were all wrestling with the same question.

What happens when a new wave of innovation arrives and the source of value begins to move?

Nearly thirty years ago, Clayton Christensen described this phenomenon in The Innovator’s Dilemma. His argument was remarkably simple. Successful companies often struggle with disruption not because they are poorly managed, but because they are exceptionally well managed. They listen to customers, improve products, optimize operations, and protect margins. They do exactly what investors expect them to do.

The problem is that disruptive innovation rarely emerges from existing customers or existing business models. It arrives from somewhere else.

Walking between these three Amsterdam events, I felt like I was watching different stages of that process play out in real time.

The Wave That Already Broke

The MVNO Summit was perhaps the most surprising event of the week.

Historically, mobile operators built enormous businesses around infrastructure. Coverage mattered. Spectrum mattered. Technology mattered. Entire fortunes were created by owning and operating networks.

Today, that conversation feels largely settled.

What struck me was how little anyone talked about networks.

Instead, the discussions focused on customer experience, loyalty, communities, rewards, partnerships, and branding. One football club MVNO explained that customers often call not because of a billing issue but because they want to talk about the latest match, a player transfer, or the future of the club. Supporting a football fan is different from supporting a mobile subscriber. The relationship becomes the product.

Banks and financial services providers shared similar stories. Connectivity is becoming one component inside a larger customer relationship. The SIM card is not the destination. It is simply another touchpoint.

Perhaps the most interesting conversations came from founders and startups. Companies like Firsty are treating mobile connectivity as a programmable asset, using machine learning and network intelligence to create better experiences. Others are experimenting with entirely new business models. Dutch startup Onze.nl recently introduced itself as an AI-native mobile provider, not focused on cheaper connectivity but on making conversations useful through summaries, memory, context, and intelligence.

The network still matters.

But nobody is buying the network.

They are buying what can be built on top of it.

In Christensen’s language, connectivity has already become infrastructure. The value has moved elsewhere.

The Wave That Is Still Forming

The following evening, the discussion shifted dramatically.

Around the table sat people from Google, Mastercard, Visa, banks, payment providers, startups, investors, regulators, and technology companies. The topic was identity, consent, trust, and the future of Agentic AI.

What fascinated me was how quickly the conversation moved beyond technology.

Nobody was debating APIs. Nobody was debating networks. Nobody was debating communications.

Instead, the discussion focused on questions that will define the next decade. How do autonomous agents receive permission to act on our behalf? How do they prove identity? Who carries liability when something goes wrong? What level of uncertainty is acceptable? What happens when AI systems are 99% accurate rather than 100% accurate?

In many ways, this felt like looking beyond the current AI wave and into the infrastructure layer that will eventually sit above it.

The participants around the table had already lived through previous waves of disruption. Banks survived fintech not because they had the best technology, but because they occupied strategic positions within the ecosystem. Mastercard and Visa are not successful because of their software. They are successful because of trust, reach, regulatory frameworks, and network effects.

The same argument can be made for telecom operators.

The network is no longer the differentiator. But trust, identity, and customer reach may still matter enormously.

The question is whether operators can successfully reposition themselves in this next wave.

The Wave Breaking Right Now

The Cloud Communications Alliance Summit felt different again.

Unlike the mobile industry, cloud communications has not yet fully completed its disruption cycle. In fact, I would argue it is right in the middle of it.

For the past twenty years, the cloud communications wave created enormous value. Hosted voice, VoIP, UCaaS, CCaaS, and collaboration platforms transformed the industry. Companies like Enreach, Dstny, RingCentral, 8×8, Zoom, Five9 and many others emerged from that wave and built meaningful businesses serving millions of users.

But sitting in the audience, I found myself thinking repeatedly about Christensen.

AI was everywhere.

AI appeared in keynote presentations. AI appeared in panel discussions. AI appeared in investor presentations. AI appeared in hallway conversations.

Yet surprisingly little of the discussion focused on what an AI-native communications company actually looks like.

Much of the debate remained operational. Regulation. Sovereignty. Channel strategy. International expansion. Margin pressure. Operational efficiency.

All important topics.

But they felt like conversations about managing the current business rather than building the next one.

The AI Divide

One theme became impossible to ignore throughout the day.

A divide is emerging within communications.

On one side are companies with the resources and ambition to invest aggressively in the next wave. Microsoft. Google. Zoom. Cisco. Salesforce. NICE. Even traditional telecom suppliers such as Amdocs are making substantial bets on AI platforms, automation, agentic workflows, and enterprise intelligence.

On the other side are successful regional and mid-sized providers with valuable customer relationships, strong channel ecosystems, and millions of users.

But also limited resources.

Limited development budgets.

Limited innovation capacity.

And investors increasingly focused on free cash flow and operational efficiency.

Michael Quinn’s presentation captured this tension perfectly. Voice pricing continues to decline. Margins remain under pressure. Investors increasingly value AI as a cost reduction mechanism rather than a growth story.

The challenge is obvious.

If AI is primarily viewed as a way to improve efficiency, who is funding the next generation of products?

Who is building the next platform?

Who is creating the next category?

This is Christensen’s dilemma in action. The existing business funds today’s operation. The future business threatens today’s operation.

The larger and more successful the incumbent becomes, the harder that transition often gets.

Why Zoom Stood Out

One company stood out during the summit.

Zoom.

Not because they have solved the challenge, but because they appeared to be asking a fundamentally different question.

Most discussions throughout the day revolved around communications.

Zoom’s story revolved around intelligence.

The most interesting slides were not about calling. They were about context, memory, relationships, workflows, organizational knowledge, and AI-powered actions.

The call itself becomes the input.

The value emerges afterwards.

One slide showed how conversations create organizational memory. Another described meeting graphs, contextual knowledge, and AI agents grounded in enterprise data.

This is not a voice strategy.

It is an intelligence strategy.

Voice simply becomes the interface.

That distinction is critical.

I do not believe the future contains less voice. If anything, AI makes voice more important. Humans naturally prefer speaking. Agents increasingly communicate through voice. Technologies like ElevenLabs demonstrate just how quickly AI voice quality is improving.

But more voice does not automatically mean more value for traditional UCaaS platforms.

The same thing happened to telecom operators. Connectivity became more important than ever, yet much of the value migrated above the network.

The same may happen here.

Voice becomes the interface.

AI becomes the value layer.

Context becomes the moat.

The Innovator’s Dilemma in Real Time

One slide from Enreach CEO Stijn Nijhuis stayed with me after the event.

It showed the evolution of communications business models.

First lines and minutes.

Then seats.

Then question marks.

It was perhaps the most honest slide of the day.

Because it acknowledged what many leaders are privately wrestling with.

Everyone knows the next business model will be different.

Few know exactly what it looks like.

That uncertainty is understandable. We are not looking at an incremental technology cycle. AI is a platform reset.

Twenty years ago, cloud communications disrupted traditional telecom.

Today, AI is disrupting cloud communications.

The companies built during the previous wave now face the same challenge that telecom operators faced before them.

Can they reinvent themselves before somebody else does?

History suggests some will.

IBM did.

Microsoft did.

Apple did.

Many others did not.

Why Startups Matter

This brings us back to the founders and startups I encountered throughout the week.

The most interesting ideas rarely came from the companies protecting legacy revenue streams.

They came from builders unconstrained by existing platforms, installed bases, or quarterly expectations.

The MVNO founders experimenting with connectivity. The identity startups designing trust frameworks. The AI-native companies reimagining communication from scratch.

Historically, these are the people who discover where the next wave is heading.

The winners are rarely those who ignore them.

They are often those who learn how to work with them.

Building Bridges Between Waves

Perhaps that is why I found this week so energizing.

The mobile industry showed what happens after disruption. The cloud communications industry showed disruption unfolding in real time. The trust and identity ecosystem revealed what may come next.

Viewed together, these were not three separate events.

They were three snapshots of the same wave at different stages of its journey.

Through The Next Cloud, through CPaaSAA, and increasingly through collaborations with Sandbox Industries and emerging startup ecosystems, I find myself spending more and more time at these intersections. Not because one industry has all the answers, but because the most interesting opportunities emerge when different worlds collide.

The incumbents bring customers, scale, reach, and distribution. The startups bring imagination, speed, and freedom. Investors bring capital. Ecosystems bring connections. None of them can build the future alone.

After spending a week watching these waves roll across Amsterdam, I am more convinced than ever that the next decade will not be won by the companies that defend the previous wave. It will be won by those willing to learn from the startups, partner across ecosystems, and reinvent themselves before they are forced to.

The wave is already here.

The question is no longer whether AI will transform communications.

The question is who learns to ride it.