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Dubai needs to build intellectual infrastructure

Subroto Bagchi, a celebrity entrepreneur and author of three best sellers, believes the intellectual infrastructure can only give cities and organisations “the differentiation,” and “the challenge for Dubai is in this area.”

“Although Dubai could capture the imagination of the world with its spectacular growth and superb infrastructure, it now needs to focus on entering the next level of infrastructure building,” he contends.

“The city of Dubai has lot similarities with other great cities in terms of physical infrastructure that gives it a presence but will not give it a differentiation,” says Bagchi who has co-founded MindTree, one of India’s most admired companies across industries.

And he explains. “Infrastructure building, which is the job of leaders, is at three levels — physical, intellectual and emotional. At the lowest level, it is the physical infrastructure. For a city, it is the bridges, ports, airport and road and communication networks and other facilities.” Physical infrastructure building has to be an ongoing process, he added.

The next level after the physical infrastructure is the intellectual infrastructure. “It will be your biggest insurance against economic downturn,” Bagchi argues. “For a city, it means freedom of thought, diversity, good eco-system and other unique factors that differentiate it from others.”

The third level, the emotional infrastructure, is the most difficult to build and sustain, Bagchi says. “All great cities of the planet, like companies, have built emotional infrastructure that is hard to describe but easy to feel.”

In a hyper-competitive world, it is easiest to demolish a city or a company at the physical layer. “It is less easy to demolish a city at the intellectual layer. But it is the most difficult to break a city apart at the emotional layer.”

Bagchi, who has authored three best sellers in row — ‘The Professional’, ‘Go Kiss the World’ and ‘The High Performance Entrepreneur’ — recalls how he applied the three level infrastructure building to script MindTree’s remarkable success story in less than a decade. He has immensely contributed towards shaping the foundation of MindTree, a global IT solutions company, and was instrumental in setting up the physical, intellectual and emotional infrastructure that is based on MindTree’s value system called CLASS.

In building MindTree, Bagchi points out, his team had paid sufficient attention in building the emotional infrastructure. He contends that his company survived the severe economic downturn of 9/11 and all subsequent crises because of the emotional infrastructure. “During tough times, it is only the emotionally bonded organisations that will sustain and survive.”

“ We can buy physical infrastructure. You can create or , borrow intellectual infrastructure. But emotional infrastructure that offers the most sustainable competitive advantage, is most difficult to build,” he argues.

Going forward, he maintains, the key challenge for MindTree will be how its leadership can build the case for creating the next higher level of emotional infrastructure.

Bagchi, a motivational speaker, believes success is about vision. In one of his inspirational speeches, he says: “Success is the ability to rise above the 
immediacy of pain. It is about imagination. It is about sensitivity to 
small people. It is about building inclusion. It is about connectedness to 
a larger world existence. It is about personal tenacity. It is about giving 
back more to life than you take out of it. It is about creating 
extra-ordinary success with ordinary lives.”

On his plans for MindTree in the Middle East, Bagchi, who is serving the company in his new role as ‘Gardener,’ says the Middle East region will be playing a key role in its plan to become a $1 billion organisation by 2014.

Identified by the company as one of its fastest growing regions, the Middle East forms part of MindTree’s ‘Rest of the World’ (ROW) market along with Japan, Australia and Singapore.

Economist Intelligence Unit has forecast the Middle East IT services market would hit $3.5 billion by 2011 with the UAE’s IT services market growing annually by 13 per cent to reach almost $1 billion next year.

“We are keen to expand in the UAE and other Gulf countries,” says Bagchi.

Going beyond the UAE, MindTree has also outlined specific plans to work with strategic local partners for markets such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait following its success in Oman and Bahrain.

Today, MindTree is among the fastest growing technology companies in Asia. The company went public in 2007 with an initial public offering to raise $54 million. An overwhelming investor response saw the IPO oversubscribed by 103 times, a further testament to the company’s success story and its commitment to technology.

· issacjohn@khaleejtimes.com