The World Is Flat - the Globalized World in the Twenty-First Century

THE WORLD IS FLAT:

THE GLOBALIZED WORLD

IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

SUMMARY

Thomas L. Freidman’s The World Is Flat: The Globalized world in the Twenty-First Century is the overview of the author’s flattened world where technology and collaborative economies have created an entirely new playing field which is viewed as flat or level in terms of commerce and competition where competitors have an equal opportunity. The flattening of the world means that we are now connecting all the knowledge centers on the planet together into a single global network which has the possibility of ushering in an amazing era of prosperity and innovation. As a result, people, companies, and countries can take advantage of these new platforms of resources and information. This will finally change all of the theories of economies, politics and jobs which will increase competition and require not only an emphasis on new skill sets, but a much more self-reliant, creative and innovative mindset.

The first half of the book illustrates Freidman’s path to a flattened world which follows three separate stages of transformation, namely:

• The three eras of globalization: country-level, company-level and individual-level;

• The ten forces that flattened the world: the fall of Berlin wall, people to people connectivity when Netscape went public, work flow software, open sourcing, outsourcing, offshoring, supply chaining, insoucing, in-forming and the steroids. These ten are influencing factors leading to globalization and world flattening whereas there are more three interrelated converging dynamics (see below) which create an even greater flattening effect; and

• The triple convergence of technologies, work-habit evolution and the emergence of massive technology-enabled workforces in developing nations

In the second half of the book, Friedman personalizes the steps and landmarks that have put us where we are and shows both the positive and negative impacts of flattening to America and the rest of the world. In addition, Friendman presents not only the problems we face today and in the past but preventive measures and possible solutions to flourish in this flat world.

POINTS LEARNED FROM THIS BOOK

• Global collaboration and competition has become easier, cheaper,