The Economist (on 28 August 2009) has an interesting piece on Cisco: 

Why then has Cisco’s boss taken his company into uncharted organisational waters? For one, because he believes he has no choice. It is not just that Cisco needs a structure that can help the firm to react quickly to new opportunities. The matrix also makes it much easier to come up with entire solutions rather than stand-alone products. This is what many customers, particularly governments, now demand. And the structure helps Cisco to become a globally integrated company by making it easier for executives from all around the world to weigh in.

At the same time, implementing such an unusual structure is a huge opportunity. It allows the firm to be a showcase for its own products. Some think it could even become a model for the corporation of the future. Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a professor at Harvard Business School, regards Cisco as an example of a “supercorp”, a coinage that is also the title of her new book. It has avoided the fate of many other companies as they grow: becoming a lumbering and bloated giant. Tom Malone, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, sees Cisco as a pioneer for a larger trend. Traditionally, he says, management was about “command and control”. Now, as technology makes communication much cheaper, bosses should move to a more flexible view, best described as “co-ordinate and cultivate”.

Given its track record with other institutional innovations such as acquisitions and outsourcing, Cisco has a good chance of coming to exemplify a new world of “co-ordinate and cultivate” in the same way that GE stood for “command and control”. If this does not come to pass, it will not have been for want of ambition. After all, Mr Chambers’s goal, as he recently put it, is nothing less than for Cisco to become “the best company in the world”.

 Chambers talks HERE about building the next generation company: innovation, talent, excellence.

 With a Yala, you can put a toe into these exciting waters - at very low risk and very low cost.