Simultaneity according to Bagchi

(January 18, 2006 - Economic Times)

Subroto Bagchi
Co-founder & COO, MindTree

There were no sleepy heads at this lecture. When Subroto Bagchi, co-founder and COO of MindTree, elaborated on the concept of simultaneity in organizations, the young audience was all ears.

The event was an interactive session organized by the ET Club at Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM) here today, where Mr. Bagchi spoke on the topic, “The 21st century and our search for simultaneity.”

With a huge demand in application development, much of the work is being outsourced to countries like India. And this trend is not likely to slow down anywhere in the near future, said Mr. Bagchi, because the world is nowhere close to a state of simultaneity.

“The US will lead when it comes to innovations, but R&D will go global,” he said. Mr. Bagchi explained simultaneity as “zero latency in organization.” He said, “It is our theory that an evolved organization will mimic behavior of organisms. For example, if you are selling a new brand of soft drinks in a super market, the minute a bottle moves, the corporate office should know. This is simultaneity.”
He pointed out that the meaning of simultaneity has seen tremendous change in last decade. “In the 90s, simultaneity meant zero latency between taking a decision and transmitting it to the point of implementation. Decisions were point-based and there was zero interactivity at all levels. Now, it is zero latency between thought, transmission of thought and activation of a collaborative framework of decision making. Knowledge has begun to reside at the point of sale, not at the corporate office,” Mr. Bagchi said.
Pepping up his lecture with analogies of ants and throwing out questions, Mr. Bagchi outlines simultaneous processes and the attributes of simultaneous organizations. He pointed out the necessity for simultaneity not just in technology, but also in leadership.

There are also flip sides to this concept though. The first concern would be that of individual privacy, Mr. Bagchi said, using as example of credit cards – swipe and your bank knows your spending pattern. Other concerns are the loss of intellectual property, the fact that convergence has brought about a situation by which anything can be transmitted to the entire world, and digital voyeurism.