Stardust Global Ventures

I got a note from pal Andy Abramson earlier about this and didn’t have a chance to comment or post until now.

Scouting Report: The Players to Pick To Build & Grow A 2.0 Telco/Carrier/Service Provider

If you’re a company like AT&T or BT, Telstra or DT you start to look around and say, “in times like these…… what can we do to be better tomorrow.”

That means you look inside, assess who’s on First, and What’s on Second, then look outside and say, who should I hire to make my company better and stronger and ready for 2.0. Given my history in pro sports, and having actually run a draft in my early days and staged some draft day events, I figured it would be fun to look at the players and figure out what’s ahead. Some are sleepers, meaning you would expect others to be listed ahead of them. Others are known quantities who have the chops to stand out in a crowd, but as a GM trained team builder one has to look past the usual suspects and find the gems in the draft. That’s what makes teams champions, not only winners.
[Read Andy's picks]

Ok, we don’t know everyone on the list personally, but certainly most.

While I have a great deal of respect for Andy’s business acumen and thought leadership, I have something he doesn’t have – a history in the telco industry. It could well be that I just don’t quite get where Andy’s coming from, so my reaction may be well off base.I think these guys are some of the best and brightest I have ever encountered in my career, but with perhaps one notable exception, I don’t see the fit in the terms I’m thinking.

I think Andy picked a territory bigger than Texas when he said Telco/Carrier/Service Provider, and I spent one career in that environment. In my career at AT&T/Lucent Technologies, as one cog in the wheel with a quarter million employees, in a strategic management role, I learned just what impact an individual really has in that universe.

Martin Geddes, is without equal in my mind. He should be in the senior management team of a major Telco/Carrier/Service Provider unquestionably. I’m not sure he’d be happy there, but the company that can woo him and bring him on board, then hold him long enough to benefit from his wisdom will have a winning startegy. No question about it.

The other guys are people I can’t imagine wanting or accepting, or being remotely interested in that sort of working environment. They’re nimble innovators who want change, responsiveness and things the culture of  the Telco/Carrier/Service Provider enterprise can never provide. It’s not in their corporate DNA any more than it is of the failing automakers.

I agree completely that these guys should all be trusted advisors, and senior managers in key positions, but I think they’d all feel stifled. And I know how long it takes to win a battle in that world. I don’t think they’d want to stick around long enough to facilitate the necessary change. Changing a telco mentality only takes two generations.

I think if these guys had any interest in that environment, they’d be working there. If Alec Saunders wanted to be running that scale of a business, I think he’d be at Microsot running their OCS strategy today. I could be wrong, but I’ll ask him next time we chat.

Knowing most of those guys, I’d hate to see them deal with the political infighting and power plays that go in in any business of that scale. I think they’d hate it, but that’s just me. I know I hated it, and when invited back into that world, I’vestayed on the periphery where there’s real conversation, real innovation, and things get done that impact how services are delivered.

What I think Andy has identifed is a brain trust of wisdom, innovation and forward thinking the likes of which the communications industry has never seen or listened to. Think of this as an uparalleled consortium of genius, and I agree with Andy every step of the way.

Technorati Tags: Telco, Carrier, Service Provider, unified communications, telecommunications, Andy Abramson