Thursday, January 29, 2009

Starfish & the Spider - The power of networks in IT Organizations

I read the excerpts of the book Starship and Spider and really loved the power of Starfish - Network of decentralized decision making...

Its quiet amazing how the author narrates the difficulty faced by Spanish in decimating the Apache tribe in the US, while the same decimated the Incas and the and other tribes of New mexico....

It seems it was difficult to decimate the apache coz it was a tribe which shared decision making in decentralized groups....the network of the groups were linked up by a Nantes where ideals, and beliefs are shared consistently among the Apache tribes...quier amazing..this is exactly what we with the evolving terror modules of Al Qeda..The interesting part of such society is that whenever it is attacked the society becomes even more open and decentralized...

No doubt the Americans have not learnt their lessons in dealing with the Talibans in the Afghan and Pakki borders...


Now imagine large MNC or Transnational organizations operating a network of delivery center...do they really run it as a decentralized empowered network node that runs their organization...not exactly they are strongly controlled by the Headquarters either as a cost center or as a profit center with control over common functions like marketing, branding, corporate finance..etc. they have some function that limits and subserves the node to the headquarters....look at countless organizations in this sphere, P&G, Unilever, Pfizer, J&J, Dell, etc. But, do these MNC/TNC really achieving their mandate of successfull growth in the regional nodes they operate in...Not really they are also ran...



Just look at the IT Industry, the Indian Pure Plays are gicing a run for money to the large MNC/TNC like IBM and Accenture....How do they manage to do that so effectively...it seems the MNC/TNC always in a reactive mode when it comes to competing with the Indian Pure plays...almost to an extent that the Indian nodes of the organization grow only coz clients come to indian pure play....would they have really grown and pursued a strategy of India growth otherwise...

My perspective is a BIG NO...coz there are certain paradoxical and conflicting Performance gaols that drive the organization. For example Revenue received by using the India node is much less when compared to using the local workforce...the challenges of economic factor and their management: Inflation, Forex, etc.

What do you think? Any other whacky conspiracy theory????

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