Think Flat

Stephen,
Have been following this blog for the past few days and it would be benificial if we could see some case studies, about how Infosys/Infosys consulting had a catalytic effect on companies going flat, besides the staff augumentation and offshoring of support/development work.

Coming from an IT standpoint, its really easy to go flat. Keep your data center in US, DBA's and Support in India. If something goes wrong because of natural disaster or politics, just move the people over and use the backed up data. Not so easy for manufacturing companies though, they have higher risks and so are more circumspect.

I can compare a company like Oracle's (having worked there) enthusiasm to do development in India with the reluctance of say Qualcomm because of questions about intellectual property rights not being safeguarded in an outsourced location.

With the advancement in the technology especially Internet and telecommunication, companies in whichever domain these are can become FLAT in the true sense.

Companies like DELL, Boeing, Wal-Mart etc are some examples of companies, which can be described as FLAT organization. These companies were adaptive to the technological changes and adaptive to the advancement in the field of information and technology to streamline their process.

Companies these days work on Risk Mitigation and Business continuity plan to foresee any risk to their business and had spread themselves across various geography as such any adverse situation doesn’t affect the business.

Stephen,

I totally agree with what u had to say. I think we need to see organizations move from "globalized" ones to "globally integrated" ones.
But, today this has just begun (eg: IBM moving its procurement HQ to CHINA) . But we have a long way to go. Companies like IBM, Accenture,EDS need to get out of the globalization mindset and get into accepting reality. The reality that they need to do & run business where it's most cost effective and efficient rather than try to stick on with their current GEO spread.It indeed sparks of political issues when a large MNC declares that they want to focus on countries where "opportunities" lie i.e not only use but also project India,China,Brazil etc as their business drivers. India has remained as a mammoth "cost-centre" destination irrespective of these company's tall claims of how critical india is for their business.

I also think that the Indian MNCs (Infy,Wipro,TCS) need to take a tough stance and go out very quickly to where opportunities are and avoid the phase of being "globalized". It's more a culture issue and focus on the "business doing well" rather than "their country doing well". We should think globally also.

In lieu with this i think India or rather any IT destination which feels threatened needs to move up the value chain in terms of its offerings and mature faster to survive in a globally integrated world. Exactly what we expected US to do when their jobs were stripped off. We need to be proactive to avoid tasting our own medicine. India needs to watch out for the looming offshore mid life crisis where we are succumbing under our own weight. It's easier said than done !

An indication of all this is when MNCs of all kinds start holding various Global Delivery GEO's accountable for their profit and loss and not just use them for staff augmentation puposes or extended arms of their business which is located elsewhere, due to petty and selfish attitudes.

My opinions are drawn from working for an American MNC & studying the Indian MNC as a competition. On a closing note, I really think there has been enough thought leadership around these areas. We need to get the ball rolling.

Stephan,
I do agree with your business acumen, but the very idea that the world is flat sounds absurd to me. To me, this world will never become flat. It will always be full of people and ideas that will make things appear roundabout.
Somehow, I fail to understand why people want to create a flat world. A world where everything is guided by a single idea, a single force and a single power.
Are we ready to face diverse situations? In flat world this is not possible. A flat world will always create dependent individuals, stiffling individuality. Naturally, we are both dependent and independent. This is why our nature is never flat.
Every individual has a roundabout nature.
If an individual is not flat, but roundabout, how could then one accept this world to be flat.
Stephen, doing business in diverse locations that is dependent on one another is a great idea, which every company should aspire for. Obviously, this not an easy thing to do. Towards this, companies need to invest lots of energy, manpower and money.
Above all, language is the most important barrier towards this goal. It is too easy to say that we need a flat world. But from where and how you will get it?
Let us live and in the best possible way. But, we should not go overboard for a flat existence.

Dear Stephen,

The world has become flat not because of just outsourcing opportunities and cost benefit. The fundemental driving force is that customers across the globe are becoming more and more uniform. Hence there is more opportunity for a firm to spread globally.If customers were do diverse across countries, then going global will be a nightmare for most of the companies. Why customers are becoming uniform is because of the information spread that connects people.

As a concept it sounds very promising but how many companies are actually following it in practice? How hard it is to follow in practice? Would like to see some followup on this one, even if only links to other sites.