Davos on the Blue Route: SunGard, a tech firm, is best known for its data-recovery services and its financial-services software, which handles more than five million trades a day for the world's financial markets.
Using software that the company wrote for its own use, SunGard programmers regularly vote on one another's ideas after discussing them in forums. "It's not the typical hierarchical structure," Conde said. "They decide things among themselves."
In another collaboration initiative, developers at a branch office in Malvern work together around large tables, like screenwriters. They account to one another for their progress every day - again without looping in the boss.
Can't we all just get along? Conde said human nature, in general, makes collaborating trickier than it seems. "Ignoring people is easier, and competing with each other is a lot more fun," he said. "Collaboration is really hard, and you have to approach it as something that's hard."
On black holes, Greek poets and Dilbert: Conde was born in Chile and moved to the United States as a teenager when a military government took control of his native country. He studied astrophysics at Yale, "writing big computer models of black holes." For leisure, he has read the classics of world literature sequentially, up to the Russian novelists. (He recommends the Greeks, and particularly Euripedes.)
He also enjoys the comic strip Dilbert. "Oh yes, yes. I am a fanatic," he said - to the point of subscribing to a daily feed from Dilbert.com. "Whenever I write something that's going to go to all the employees, I always think, 'How would Dilbert deal with this memo?' "
Thoughts on the unthinkable: During the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Conde was on the 33d floor of the World Trade Center.
