Thomas L. Friedman on "The World Is Flat"

This past weekend my wife and I attended the iit05 conference where Thomas L. Friedman was one of the keynote speakers and he gave a captivating talk summarizing his recent book The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century. As you might have heard or read by now, in his new book Tom Friedman is talking about how the world has shrunk and technology has leveled the playing field for everyone around the world to compete in the global marketplace. You might say "I knew that already," but Tom Friedman has a casual and engaging way of explaining what he means and how it affects us, which made us sit up and listen to his talk.

Friedman began his talk recounting how, for a long while, he has been going back and forth between the Lexus and the Olive Tree issues (based on his previous book The Lexus and the Olive Tree). Then last year, when outsourcing became a topic in the U.S. presidential election campaign, he decided to go to the land of outsourcing (India, China) and interview people who were doing the outsourced jobs. That's when it hit him that while we were busy with other things, the world had quietly changed—in his words, it had become flat (I assume he meant the playing field is leveled). He decided to take a few months off to put down his thoughts on paper and the result was the new book. For the benefit of the audience, he went through the key historical and technological events—the fall of the Berlin Wall, release of Microsoft Windows 3.0 (a universal GUI for everyone), the 1995 Netscape IPO and the release of the Netscape Web browser, the fiber optic networks installed in the heyday of Internet boom that now provides us low-cost communications, interoperability of software applications, and ubiquitous wireless communication—that, in his opinion, collectively brought about the current state of affairs where any capable individual can participate in the global economy regardless of geographic location. He calls this "Globalization 3.0" and he outlined six new ways that people can now collaborate in the flat world: outsourcing, offshoring, open-sourcing, insourcing, supply-chaining, and informing (by which he means unlimited access to information). He gave interesting examples of each of these new ways of working, including how terrorists are also exploiting the flat world tools (you can find all the examples in his book).

So what does this all mean? Friedman says the horizontal collaboration among individuals and companies in the flat world is shaping global economics and politics now. He acknowledges that not everyone can participate in the flat world, but even if a small percentage of the world's population can collaborate and compete, the impact is still going to be huge. Friedman suggests that we better hone our science and engineering skills so we can be ready to compete in the flat world. He said this is what he tells his daughters nowadays: "Girls, finish your homework—people in China and India are starving for your jobs.'' All in all, it was a great keynote speech that got us thinking about the new world order and also concerned about what the future holds for our daughters.

Tags: friedman flat outsourcing offshoring insourcing supplychaining informing iit IIT iit05

Comments

[thebizofknowledge.com]

I recently picked up and began reading Friedman's latest book and find it fascinating and illuminative on many points. This is a must read for anyone interested in global economics.

[Bie]

Very informative read and should spark your imagination - how today's technology affects globalization which in turn will affect how you do business in the future. If you want your business to be on the cutting edge and ahead of your competitors, read this book!