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Postcard No. 3 from San Jose, California 187

viable. AT&T’s chief executive, executive council, and board of directors all
reacted favorably. Later the Business Network Services and wholesale
business units also asked for ODD strategy help.
Thus the ODDsters had accomplished a great deal. They had brought
focus to overwhelming problems. They were helping senior executives
develop solutions.
However, ODD also had real weaknesses. What exactly was ODD
trying to do? It was successfully calling attention to problems. However,
if the goal was to encourage real business achievement, ODD did not
seem to be addressing the whole of the challenge. ODD often seemed to
take for granted much of the institutionalized system that marginalized
researchers. When the ODDsters referred to a rising executive as an
“empty suit” and sought to “infect” him, they were thinking like gadflies
rather than players. A list of ODDsters’ reflections on what they could
have done differently (reprinted in Chapter 10) included “avoided an
us-versus-them mentality that may have created some confrontation” and
“turned down the ODDsters’ slight intellectual snobbism” (Muller &
Välikangas, 2003: 117).
ODDsters never developed a clear and coherent approach to top man-
agement or to the corporate strategy and planning department—although
top management would inevitably have to lead the transformation they
were seeking. (The reflections list also includes a statement that they should
have “sought to address higher audiences in top management in a more sys-
tematic manner.”) Moreover, ODDsters gave little thought to how to deal
with challenges to their influence.

THE FALL OF ODD—AND AT&T

Building a movement around the knowledge of the dangers an organization
faces is hazardous. People who understand your message may leave. During
1997, several key movement members left. As discussed in Chapter 10, the
departures culminated in November when Greg Blonder left the firm soon
after a journalist published his off-the-record thoughts about the future of
network evolution. [He is now a prosperous venture capitalist (Blonder,
2005)].