World is Flat Book Report
Reflection: Synopsis
Thomas L. Friedman’s “The World is Flat – A brief history of 21st century” forms an interesting read. The book filled with largely undisputable facts as well as relatable real life stories. The author explores a wide range of perspectives, ranging from social, cultural, economic, and political issues that have contributed to the globalization or so called ‘flattening’ of the world. The book is both informative and intriguing, unsettling at times, but also empowering at other instances. The unsettling twist that the author employs reinforces the fact that things have been changing at a rather rapid pace across the globe. It is in our nature as human beings to be more comfortable with what is predictable it is understandably unsettling to witness the fast-paced change happening around us. The author underscores an important realistic point in his argument: that all the new tools and means that have resulted from the flattening of the world provide us with golden opportunity to begin learning about ourselves and make necessary adjustment to survive in the increasingly globalizing world. Friedman correctly observes that we need to look deep inside ourselves and develop critical thinking along with adopting smart ways of working so that the flat world does not flatten us but rather make more prosperous in all we can be and become.
Albeit of the controversial issues covered in the book that identifies Friedman as an unapologetic technological determinist and an unabashed free-market capitalist-cum-neo-liberal, the book is undoubtedly an important thought-provoking piece of literature. It gives much insight into the apparent convergence of technology, economics, culture, politics, and religion – something that makes it a must read.
Forces that flattened the world
Of the ten main ‘flatteners’ of the world that Friedman identifies In his book, the first three forces are the foundation of the entire “flat world platform” because they have enabled a collaboration platform in which people across the globe can share digital content inexpensively. These three forces form the foundation upon the other seven factors plus the “steroids” are built on. This is the foundation that provides the vision, knowledge, as well as technological capacity for the rest of the world flatteners (Friedman, 2008). The flatteners represent major events, developments, and processes that are attributed for the increasing globalization in the world. The author contends that flattening of the world has been happening in fits and starts since mid-nineteenth century (expect during the Cold War period).
The first flattener – the Falling of the Berlin Wall in 1989, is significant in the sense that it tipped the existing balance of power across the world from authoritarian rule to a more democratic free market society. This in effect marked the end of a 28 year separation between West Germany and East Germany (Friedman, 2008). It signified both the end of the Cold War and allowed people on the other side of the wall to become part of the economic mainstream. This first flattener did away with the last fence standing in that it marked the opening to a global economy and a global world as well as elimination of boundaries, borders and isolation. The coming of the new world created new opportunities for a host of emerging technologies to expand limitlessly bringing people closer as evidenced by the emergence of Microsoft’s global computer interface, Windows 3.0 (Friedman, 2008). Therefore, the first flattener ushered in “The New Age of Creativity”, where people from across the world were presented with tool to access, modify, and share new information in much faster and easier ways.
The second core flattener – Netscape going public – embodies the unprecedented development of the Internet, making the computer and connectivity more useful to millions of people across the world. This is the flattener that opened and diversified the world of communication as well as e-commerce to an increasingly expanding global market. Thanks to this second flattener people gained the ability to access and manipulate through a computer everyday global occurrences, flattening the world even further (Friedman, 2008). This especially true considering that standardization averted the unfortunate situation in which information would infinitely be a privileged of a selected few using small networks found in established businesses and institutions of higher learning.
The third flattening force, Work Flow Software, further opened the world of communication and commerce to a growing global market. For the first time ever, a large number of people across the globe were able to collaborate and work together on several projects via a shared medium (Friedman, 2008). The development of Apache and Wikipedia, for example, enabled us to create and upload great amount of web content together with enhanced community collaboration. The development of a standard software enabled better workflow in organizations as well as between organizations.
Triple Convergence
According Friedman’s narration, all the ten flattening factors converged around the year 2000 to form a whole new, flatter, global playing field. An estimated 3 billion people mainly from China, India, and the former Soviet Union joined the global playing field (Friedman, 2008). The Triple Convergence consisted of three phases: Convergence 1 brought about a new playing field that enabled knowledge and work sharing in real time, regardless of geographical, distance, or language constraints. This was enabled by the technological convergence of hardware and workflow software. In convergence 2, there was integration of new technology with new business processes as employees increasingly understood leveraging technology. The human factor (innovators, business consultants, managers, workers, IT specialists, etc) was able to utilize technological potential at their disposal to create new ideas along with new business models. This has significantly benefitted from the apparent shift with value creation chain that has moved from vet (hierarchical players and roles) to horizontal, efficient networked value creation structure. The latter relies on information and knowledge of players involve and accessibility to necessary tools instead of depending on hierarchy. The third convergence characterized the coming together of approximately 3 million new players with greater opportunity “to plug and play” as well the ability to develop and commercialize their knowledge and thus participate in the value creation chain through networking. Convergence 3 is mash up of the first and second convergences. It has made the difference in spreading and speeding up the dynamics as well as consequence of the increasingly interconnected world.
The Triple Convergence has contributed significantly to outsourcing and off-shoring as key business phenomenon. Off-shoring refers to a concept where a company opts to move its production activities from its mother country to another country that can perform them in a more cost-effective way (Friedman, 2008). In this regard, China has successfully positioned itself as the world’s leading center of manufacturing off-shoring while India is acclaimed as the world’s center for knowledge-industry off-shoring. India’s Institutes of Technology have characteristically highly competitive schools heavily subsidized by tax dollars and produce highly qualified and skilled professionals.
Outsourcing have served to enable companies to separate manufacturing and service activities into components, where individual components are performed in highly efficient and cost-effective manner. The fiber optic boom enabled outsourcing of any service, knowledge work, call center, or business support center with the potential to be digitalized (Friedman, 2008). In the same light, off-shoring has made it necessary for developing countries to strive to keep up with competition from other countries that offer low cost solutions, better quality yet cheaper products on the global marketplace. The joining of China in the World Trade Organization 2001 took off-shoring to new heights owing to the fact that China agreed to comply with international law along with standard business practices that assured investors on the financial advantage of establishing factories in China.
The Quiet Crisis
According to Friedman’s argument in chapter 7, six ‘little dirty secrets’ factors are colluding to threaten the ability of America to continue remaining competitive in the increasingly flattening world.
The first dirty little secret as “The Numbers Gap,” which refers to the rapidly declining number of American graduates particularly in science and math fields. This is troubling in light of the increasing number of graduates in these fields around the world along with the rapid speed at which jobs are being created requiring science and engineering professionals. Many of the students receiving science and engineering degrees in American universities are not necessarily American (Friedman, 2008). This is a correct observation considering that majority of American graduates are to be found in other professional fields such as business administration, law, and medicine. The number of students coming into the system does not therefore compliment those leaving, resulting in a significant number gap that threatens America’s continued competitiveness in the flattened world. In this regard, it obvious that the United States needs to pay greater attention to and support long-term basic engineering research so as to effectively build a reliable knowledge base to address growing society’s needs. Friedman’s arguments on the numbers gap can be strongly seconded by the fact that the 21st century requires professionals with great conceptual, literacy, numeracy, and analytical skills that will come in handy in research, design, production, as well as marketing and sales.
The second dirty little secret is “The Education Gap at the Top.” The author is of the opinion that there is no sufficient motivation for American students to take up courses in advanced math, science, and engineering. This has been contributed to by the typical lack of interest in math- and science-oriented courses together with the general decline in work ethic (Friedman, 2008). Young Americana are also watching too much television and spending time on the time as being responsible for the declining students’ proficiency in both reading and writing. Of greater impact, though, American schools are today characterized by lack of sufficient funds for research in science, engineering, and technology. Thus, American students are increasingly becoming less educated relative to students from and in other countries. The author’s assertions are but the truth of the matter – it is unrealistic for America to expect to remain a world leader and competitive across the board while they lack proper foundation.
Friedman’s third dirty little secret is the “The Ambition Gap”. It is contended that American students are no longer that ambitious like their foreign counterparts. An increasing number of American students are growing lazy, failing to take full advantage of the opportunities and luxuries at their disposal (Friedman, 2008). Friedman’s disposition on the ambition gap are true considering that many American students like most of the Europeans cousins already have good life and see no reason to aspire higher. However, Asian and Indian students are motivated to gain knowledge and competitive skills so as to better their lives. Also, many US chief executive officers are favoring outsourcing knowledge work because of their double benefit: low prestige, low paying jobs become high paying but relatively cheaper to American rates.
The forth dirty little secret is “The Education Gap at the Bottom,” which relates to American education system from the kindergarten level through 12th grade in a flat world. The American national school system is ill-prepared to produce the sort of graduates required in a flat-world economy (Friedman, 2008). This troublesome considering that an American high-school graduate are now qualified for increasingly fewer jobs.
The fifth dirty little secret “The Funding Gap,” which implies the dwindling amount of funding that Congress is making available for research in physical and mathematical sciences, and engineering. America would need increase its federal investment in research by a minimum of 10 percent each year if it is to mitigate the challenges of the 21st century where the world is rapidly flattening (Friedman, 2008). There is no argument about this point because investing in research and development is highly necessary in the current technological world.
The last dirty little secret is “The Infrastructure Gap.” The author contends that American lags behind other countries in terms of per capita broadband deployment (Friedman, 2008). This is problematic considering that international broadband measurements and indices play an important role in the technology policy debate of the country. The rankings are also crucial in advancing innovation and productivity across all sectors of the economy.
The author is spot-on with his perspective on the United States’ IT secrets that are threatening the nation’s position in the flat world. As Friedman suggests, meeting the challenges of the flat world would require a comprehensive, energetic, and overly focused response the way it was done for the communism challenge. The United States thus needs able leadership that will lead the country towards taking up more science, math, and engineering courses to reach new unprecedented frontier of knowledge suited for the flat world. The society must also commit the government to develop the infrastructure, institutions, and safety nets will make every American citizen to become employable in a world that lifetime employment is fast becoming a mirage.
Choosing a profession
With the growth of outsourcing, the present American generation and those that will come are faced with real threats of losing out on jobs because they have been claimed by professionals in other countries. The danger comes from three main fronts: the fact that anything with the potential to digitized can be easily outsource; jobs are increasingly being awarded to the smartest, cheapest, and most productive individuals regardless of physical location; and the greatest value is increasingly being created using the most flexible access to markets, goods and services. In this regard, the following jobs are diminishing in the United States to outsourcing: software development; product design & development; tax return preparation; stock market analysis; lost luggage tracking & retrieval; recruiting; education and tutoring; travel reservations; CAT scan interpretation, journalism and publishing; and such business process as customer support, tech support, and billing and collections (Ruth & Pizzato, 2007). This is because these jobs, relative to other professions, require very little of the performer to be at the same physical location. American companies are increasingly recognizing the talent, education, and passion of professionals offshore. There is no argument that the talent pool is superior offshore because comparatively high number of degree graduates to drive innovation unmatched by their American counterparts.
A job in the information technology sector would be best adjusted to the new realities. In light of the hard economic times and the state our local facilities and knowledge base, it would be much profitable to outsource an IT job, for instance, to a specialized country as opposed to incurring high set up cost and high payroll costs to start a new IT company in the Silicon Valley.
America stands to reap considerable cost savings if they choose to locate in regions with closer proximity to North America, such as South American or eastern European countries, for example. These regions have increasing high-skilled low cost labor, greater cultural understanding as well as proximity to affluent Western European markets. Geographical closeness would allow our outsourcing companies to better manage their supply chain in addition to exercising more control over the whole process to ensure utmost quality and productivity.
Conclusion
Friedman’s book The World is Flat has been helped in understanding the whole concept of outsourcing. The greatest take away from the book is that outsourcing helps American industry instead of losing American jobs in the aggregate. This is because outsourcing enables firms to split manufacturing and service activities into segments that can be subcontracted and executed efficiently at a global scale. Outsourcing is good for the health of the company if it is undertaken in the right way. This is especially the case because if a company simply outsource without following the economic lessons of the concept, maximization of results would not be realized.
It was interesting to learn that an outsourcing relationship thrives in an environment where the parties involved worked together for the common good of both of them. Reading the book has helped gain insight on the different perspectives together with effects of outsourcing. The book demystifies the cultural stereotyping that has become part and parcel of the outsourcing concept. It is clear that outsourcing is now a major element of the modern global business and economic landscape. In fact, outsourcing is bound to reach new levels of efficiency and efficiency as it increasingly become an accepted cooperate exercise producing benefits to all and those involved play by the rules.
Finally, the most interesting part of the book that deserves a re-read is the “Quiet Crisis.” This section is very insightful and helps a reader think hard about the current situation and probable future of the United States and its place in the changing flat world.
References:
Ruth, S. & Pizzato, A. (2007). Is the World Still Flat? An Update. Retrieved from: http://policy-icasit.gmu.edu/pdfs/&Is%20the%20World%20Still%20Flat.pdf
Cladwell, J. (2010). Book Report on The World Is Flat. Retrieved from: http://www.workforceincubator.org/Portals/0/flat_world.pdf
Friedman, T. L. (2008). The world is flat: A brief history of the twenty-first century. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre.
