Innovator's Dilemma - Validation of Vision

Innovators know. Innovators experience gratification when their visionary ideas finally get acceptance and traction. Today's headline is personal:

AT&T to Trial Mobile Payments for Online Shopping

During 2001 at AT&T's AT&T Labs incubator organization, I championed an incubator initiative (1 out of 2 to make it to market out of 20 AT&T Labs incubator initiatives) that encompassed mobile payments for online shopping (as well as wireline payments, pre paid payments, ISP payments and cable payments) that over phases would leverage all the major AT&T businesses' vast and vital assets of direct billed customer bases of tens of millions (as well as pre-paids robust partner distribution network).

AT&T's direct billed customer bases were not just generally overlooked strategic assets ('trusted billing relationships with a infrastructure core competency on a scale that was second to none'), they were basically viewed internally by leadership as a nuisance cost-center. Efforts were made to outsource the billing function ... but this complex, robust, overlooked asset turned out to be too big to outsource. Ironically, history was repeating itself from the 1984 Divestiture when AT&T c-levels and consultant advisors viewed AT&T's network as the crown-jewels to keep, jettisoning the LECs (Local Exchange Carriers) and their huge billing infrastructures as the antiquated portion of the business.

In late 3Q01 the then AT&T Labs President was days away from approving the incubator's launch when he jumped to another company, was replaced by a new Labs President who in short order axed the entire incubator organization - including the multi-phased, multi-business unit, eCommerce incubator initiative that F500 c-levels literally called "the Holy Grail of online billing" (the target customers got-it!). Phase 1 did launch directly by the prepaid group and began to scale with the likes of Disney, Sony, Rhapsody Music, Vindigo, CBS Sportsline and other premium content providers, coupled with distribution partners including Wal-Mart, BestBuy, 7-Eleven, fye and others ... but then came the SBC acquisition of AT&T.

Note that AT&T c-levels back in '01 were chasing the fraudulent industry-ghost Worldcom, a significant environmental factor that clouded their ability to focus on and genuinely appreciate the longer term harvest-potential these assets and core competencies represented on the silver plate before them [but also post SBC acquisition too as I learned while interfacing with new AT&T leadership based in Texas years later].

Innovators, especially in today's unprecedented economic climate, driving innovation takes more than strategic vision, persuasive evangelizing skills along with political adeptness at building alignment across leadership representing diverse stakeholder groups - internally and externally, it also takes relentless determination, soul-testing sacrifice and at least sometimes, relentless patience. (Here's the link to the story: http://www.cio.com/article/630963/AT_T_to_Trial_Mobile_Payments_for_Online_Shopping?source=rss_news)