Knowledge@Wharton has an excellent interview with Subroto Bagchi:
There is a mistaken notion that every start-up [begins its existence in] a garage, and a [garage-sized firm] doesn’t have to have a process. More start-ups remain at that size and then they go off the scene, because they fail to embrace process. Even if you start small — and you have to start small — you can pretend that, “You know what? I’m a Fortune 500 company, and I need to front-load my organization with the right process.” This is because process is not about a framework that will bind you up; process is like plumbing. It’s like infrastructure.
Let us imagine that you want to someday build a skyscraper. You have to pre-think what plumbing must go into the skyscraper. It cannot be an afterthought. The plumbing you require for building a skyscraper is very different from the plumbing that you require for a two-bedroom house. You don’t build the plumbing for a two-bedroom house today and say, “As I build another floor, and then another floor, I will add to the plumbing.” No. That doesn’t work. So you have to pretend that, “I am a skyscraper.” The inlet and outlet for the skyscraper is going to be very different. So pretending [or imagining] is a very, very important thing.
