The World Isn't Round, It's Flat!

According to Tom Friedman, in his new book “The World Is Flat.” I’m only about halfway through this long book, with a subtitle of “A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century”, but what I have read is fascinating. It’s like connecting all the dots in today’s very complicated world. So this is just a preview; I’m sure I will have a lot more to say when I finish the book.

Here are the 10 forces that flattened the world:
(1) 11/9/89: When the walls came down and the Windows went up (fall of the Berlin Wall)
(2) 8/9/95: When Netscape went public
(3) Work flow software: Let’s do lunch – have your application talk to my application
(4) Open-sourcing: Self-organizing collaborative communities
(5) Outsourcing: Y2K
(6) Offshoring: Running with gazelles, eating with lions
(7) Supply-chaining: Eating sushi in Arkansas
(8) Insourcing: What the guys in the funny brown shorts are really doing
(9) In-forming: Google, Yahoo!, MSN Web Search
(10) The steroids: Digital, Mobile, Personal, and Virtual

Today’s lesson from Friedman:

My advice to my daughters in this flat world is very brief and very blunt: “Girls, when I was growing up, my parents used to say to me, ‘Tom, finish your dinner – people in China and India are starving.’ My advice to you is: Girls, finish your homework – people in China and India are starving for your jobs.”

Hmmmm..... More to come.