"How would our lives change," wondered entrepreneur Rouzbeh Yassini-Fard in 1987, "if everyday people had a stable, high-speed data connection to the Internet?" While he wasn't the first to imagine a world of digital connectivity, Yassini-Fard was in the vanguard by creating the cable modem, which transformed residential Internet access from its slow, frustrating dial-up origins to a fast, always-on, and extraordinary connectivity tool by harnessing the existing infrastructure of the residential cable network.

As the leader of a small Massachusetts company, LANcity, in the early 1990s, Yassini-Fard overcame a cascade of technical challenges, investment community naysayers, and unnerving business obstacles to create the cable modem technology that has changed the way billions of individuals across the globe now manage their daily lives and commerce. Shunned by venture capitalists and surviving on a shoestring budget, Yassini-Fard and his colleagues were willing to bet it all on the creation of the cable modem and the pursuit of its widescale global adoption.