Thomas Friedman’s book “The World is Flat” is paean to globalization. The central tenet of this book is that the barriers to trade and commerce are disappearing due to globalization and this ensures as level playing field for anyone who wants to enter the global economy and sell a product or a service.
This, Friedman argues is the result of the ten “flatteners” in terms of the innovations and hard technology improvements like availability of bandwidth and structural changes accompanying globalization. Further, there is the “triple convergence” that happens which is described in the succeeding sections. The title of the book is drawn from a conversation that the author has with the CEO of an Indian software company (Infosys) where the CEO (Nandan Nilekani) describes how his company is taking advantage of the flattening out of the barriers and capitalizing on the numerous opportunities thrown up by globalization. As Nandan puts it to Friedman, the world is indeed flat.
The ten flatteners are the major political events, innovations and companies that made the world sit up and take notice. (p. 48). These ten flatteners opened up nee possibilities in the sphere of a globalised world and ensured that the world was not the same again.
The ten flatteners are described below:
- The fall of the Berlin Wall: This event is not only symbolic but also brought masses of people who were hitherto in the communist regimes to participate in the opportunities thrown up by globalization
- Netscape going public: This event made the internet accessible to anyone with a computer and allowed the widespread acceptance of the web as a medium of exchange.
- The introduction of workflow software: This relates to adoption of the open standards that let applications talk to each other.
- Self organizing collaborative companies: This gave rise to the practice of collaborative projects bringing together developers from all countries in contact with each other.
- The Y2K outsourcing phenomenon: The outsourcing of work related to the Y2K bug allowed countries like India to get a toehold in the software outsourcing industry. This was then leveraged to provide high quality services at low cost to the western countries.
- Offshoring: As stated above, once the outsourcing took shape, the world with its flat nature enabled companies from all over the world to get a share of the global outsourcing pie.
- Supply chaining: The best example of a company gaining due practices similar to Just-in-time adapted to logistics made companies like Wal-Mart offer competitively priced products
- Insourcing: This relates to the way in which employees of one company perform additional tasks for other companies.
- Informing: The advent of search engines like Yahoo and Google revolutionized the flow of information across the web
- The steroids: Gadgets like mobiles and other devices.
The first convergence has to do with all the ten flatteners coming together. They were around ever since the 1990’s but the tipping point was reached around 2000 when all the flatteners converged to make the collaborative form a multiple access thing that everyone can share and work with.
The second convergence has to do with the fact that productivity jumps take place in discrete rather than in a continuous manner. Any technological innovation since the times of the industrial revolution has made the increase in productivity lag by a few years or decades, as the case may be. If we map out human history, the earliest innovations probably took centuries before there was a noticeable increase in productivity. But, with globalization we are seeing a productivity leap that is much more compressed in time scale than the others. The second convergence is when the people adjust to the coming together of the ten flatteners and make the adjustment in their work habits.
While the second convergence is about processes and structural changes that are necessary to accommodate the flatteners, the third convergence is about people entering the global economy with specialized skills. This relates to the entry of highly specialized resources from India. China and other Asian countries with the necessary technical skills entering the workforce and providing an enriching as well as competitive labor market. The third convergence relates to those people who have benefited from the ten flatteners and are poised to make the next leap.
One of the other key points made in this book is about how culture is the differentiating factor in how countries cope with globalization. Those countries that can absorb and assimilate the foreign influences in the exchange of goods and ideas are best suited to adapt to what is called the twin challenge of globalization and localization.
This theory of Friedman has become famous and attracted criticism as well. According to Friedman, no two nations that have made components in a Dell laptop would go to war with each other. He conducts a thought experiment where he traces the antecedents of the parts of his Dell laptop and concludes that all the countries that have manufactured these components were unlikely to go to war with each other. In other words, he says that a globalised world is also a conflict free world.
In this section, we try to address some questions related to the assignment instructions. While we have dealt with the theme of the book, the point has to be made that the thesis of the book is not applicable to all income levels. This is because the “flat world” envisaged by Friedman also needs equality of opportunity and access to basic and higher education that is lacking in many of the countries that Friedman holds up as glittering examples of globalization.
While the book is optimistic in its tone with the author being an acknowledged cheerleader for globalization, it strikes a realistic note as well. In recognizing the new realities of the global economy as well as being optimistic despite the setbacks caused by 9/11.
The book should have thrown some light on the “dark underbelly” of globalization where though the winners outnumber the losers, the ones who are losing out are substantial as well. One interesting point made in the book is about the “sorting out” of the labyrinth of laws and other conditionalties created by the globalization process as related to the digital storage rules of websites and the like.
Friedman’s book is as much about the ability of the developing countries to take advantage of the processes of globalization as the late realization in the developed world about some of these changes. The book also argues that there is a “perfect storm” brewing in the United States when the lack of highly skilled workforce from the native population and the inability of universities to develop curriculum consistent with the new realities come together. Thus, the book is also a wake up call to the world’s largest economy to engage in self correction before it is too late.
Overall, the book is a must read for anyone who wants to know more about the new trends shaping an increasingly globalised world. It is an important contribution to the existing literature surrounding globalization.
Sources
The World is Flat. 450 Pages. Penguin. Thomas Friedman.