Physical size does not gurantee success, what matters is mental size!

Knowledge@Wharton: You make a couple of interesting statements in your book. One is that "Startups can avoid mistakes by pretending to be big". And second, you write that "being big is not about size, but about mindset". Could you explain what you mean?

Bagchi: Thank you for that question. The concepts behind both are very dear to me. One is about pretending to be big. If you look back in time, all of us at some point in time have pretended to be big. It's a very important directional statement. For example, the little girl, who, when Mom is not watching, puts on Mom's lipstick or tries to step into Mom's stiletto shoes, or the little eight-year-old boy, who, when nobody is watching, is foaming his face with Dad's shaving cream. When you do that, you are mentally growing up. You want to grow up to be a big boy or big girl someday.

In an organizational context, there are two things that come to mind. One is process, and the second is governance. Usually, start-ups underestimate the power of these two things and their capability to properly reduce in size and sustainability.