Arlene Harris (inventor)

Arlene Joy Harris (born June 6, 1948) is an entrepreneur, inventor, investor, and policy advocate in the telecommunications industry.

She is the president and co-founder of Dyna LLC, an incubator for start-up and early-stage organizations historically in the wireless technology field.

Notably, she led the development and market introduction of the SOS phone, renamed the Jitterbug as part of her GreatCall organization.

[4] Subsequently, it was sold to a Chicago private equity company in July 2017 and acquired on August 15, 2018, by Best Buy Co, Inc.[5] Born and raised in Los Angeles, Harris began her career at the age of 12 as a mobile telephone switchboard operator for her family's business, Industrial Communications Systems (ICS), Inc. (sold to Metromedia in 1983, now Spok).

ISL promotes the use of disciplined and verifiable product safety protection concepts and rules in the creation of all software and its provision of services to connect consumer devices.

[9] Jitterbug was named to the New York Times “Top 10 List” of greatest technology ideas of 2006, per personal tech columnist David Pogue.

[10] It was a finalist in Yahoo's "Last Gadget Standing" competition at the Consumer Electronics Show in 2007[11] and was named by Reader's Digest as one of its “Top 100 Products”.

SOS developed a phone and specialized services for making outgoing calls for urgent and occasional communications marketed primarily to elderly Americans.

Because of the success ICS realized in its wholesale strategy of bolstering opportunities for partners and service adoption by new users, its resale concept was mandated by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the original cellular spectrum allocations in 1982.

This system was licensed to GTE Mobilnet for use in its ViaCall service, which provided pay cellphones in public vehicles, limousines, trains, barges, and oil rigs.

In 1986, Harris launched Dyna LLC in Chicago, Illinois, and later relocated the organization to Del Mar, California, to incubate and spin out new ideas and to help young companies and entrepreneurs.