Gagan Kaul Blog

An excellent book on globalization and the technology revolution.

Jan 28, 2006 by Gagan Kaul product The World is Flat

★★★★★ “In China today, Bill Gates is Britney Spears. In America today, Britney Spears is Britney Spears — and that is our problem.”

Thomas L. Friedman, a three-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and currently a foreign affairs columnist for New York Times, is the author of the book The World Is Not Flat. The book explores the political and technological changes that have flattened the world and made it a smaller place. He tells us that globalization is a by-product of technology. This is one of the most entertaining and thought provoking books that I have read in recent times. Even though some of the questions are left unanswered due to lack of a strong solution, yet understanding the forces of change made the book an interesting read.

Friedman has done a metaphorical analysis of the global business environment by calling the world flat. This thought provoking “discovery” of the world’s flatness came to him when he was in Bangalore talking to Nandan Nilekani, CEO of Infosys Technologies. Nilekani had told Friedman - “Tom, the playing field is being leveled.” Friedman’s further excursions into various business set ups in Bangalore exposed him to highly educated graduates who are thriving on “outsourcing” from American businesses: not just workers in call centres but accountants who know all American tax regulations, executive assistants who will research and prepare your next PowerPoint presentation, software designers, and aircraft engineers. And seeing the new business set ups in India and China, the leaders in outsourcing space, provided the impetus to his idea about the flatness of the world.

What created the flat world? Friedman stresses technological forces. “Paradoxically, the dot-com bubble played a crucial role. Telecommunications companies like Global Crossing had hundreds of millions of dollars of cash — given to them by gullible investors — and they used it to pursue incredibly ambitious plans to ”wire the world,” laying fiber-optic cable across the ocean floors, connecting Bangalore, Bangkok and Beijing to the advanced industrial countries. This excess supply of connectivity meant that the costs of phone calls, Internet connections and data transmission declined dramatically — so dramatically that many of the companies that laid these cables went bankrupt. But the deed was done, the world was wired. Today it costs about as much to connect to Guangdong as it does New Jersey. The next blow in this one-two punch was the dot-com bust. The stock market crash made companies everywhere cut spending. That meant they needed to look for ways to do what they were doing for less money. The solution: outsourcing.”

The basic thought process underlying the book is that globalization, Internet, and increased geopolitical interconnectedness are the key forces shaping up a world where work can be done by just about anyone from anywhere. This has leveled the playing field for everyone, and hence the flatness. The book also talks about the perception and acknowledgement of this idea unconsciously by countries, companies, communities, and individuals. It further goes on to advice how governments and societies can, and must, adapt to this change.

There are a lot of anecdotes and wisdom quotes mentioned in the book. My favourite one being: “Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows that it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows that it must out run the slowest gazelle or it will starve. It does not matter whether you are a lion or gazelle. When the sun comes up you had better be running.”

What Friedman has tried to say in the book is that today’s world belongs to those who can learn and adapt. In the current situation, no job or skill is entirely safe from the forces of globalization and economics, but by recognizing these forces for what they are and by accepting adaptation and reinvention as a necessity, anyone can compete and prosper in the global economy. This change in the outlook and modus operandi of each and every business does not spell doom, but addresses financial and political realities which require change to stay on top of them.

Strongly recommended !!! Grab this book as soon as you can.