The world is flat : Thomas L. Friedman

The book is on how, why and what about the Globalized world in the Twenty-First Century.

The global competitive playing field was being leveled, as Thomas L. Friedman realized during his visit to India, and during a chat with Nandan Nilekani.

Now more people can plug, play, compete, connect and collaborate with more power than ever before. We are all becoming publishers and therefore all becoming public figures.

The three greatest era 0f Globalization:
1. 1492 to 1800: When Columbus set sail. Countries globalized and world started shrinking.
2. 1800 to 2000: Great Depression and World Wars I and II, industrial revolution. Companies globalized and world became smaller.
3. 2000 and after: Individuals collaborate and compete globally, in a flat-world platform.

The ten forces that 'FLATTENED' the world:
#1 (11/9/1989) The New age of creativity: When the walls came down and the windows went up.(Berlin-MS)
#2 (08/9/1995) The New age of connectivity: When the web went around and the Netscape went public.
#3 Work Flow Software: 24/7/365 we are working: The Flat-World platform emerges.
#4 Uploading: Harnessing the power of communities. We are the web: Leads to globalisation of the local.
#5 Outsourcing: Y2K: India is 'The second buyer', who mined the brains of its own people.
#6 Off-shoring: (11/12/2001:China formally joined WTO): Running with Gazelles,eating with lions. While outsourcing takes only a limited specific function, off-shoring takes the whole factory activity.
#7 Supply-Chaining: Eating Sushi in Arkansas: Replace inventory with information. Wall-marts Sam Walton's vision was build by David Glass who is to supply-chaining what Bill Gates is to word processing. Selling at EDLP (Every Day Low Prices)
#8 In-sourcing: What the Guys in funny Brown shorts are really doing: FedEx, UPS (slogan: Your world synchronized: They even repair Toshiba laptops), DHL: Not just delivering packages, but doing logistics.
#9 In-Forming: Google, Yahoo!, MSN web search
#10 The Steroids: Digital, Mobile, Personal and Virtual. (iPaq's): Computing, Instant messaging and file sharing, phone calls over internet, Video conferencing, computer graphics, Wireless technologies and devices.

All these reinforce one another like complementary goods.

A new player, in a new playing field, developing new processes and habits for horizontal collaboration - is the most important force shaping global economics and politics in the early twenty-first century.

We have grown up with hippies in the 1960s, became yuppies in the 1980s to Zippies in 2000s. Cool, confident, creative, seeks challenge,loves risk, and shuns fear. Never stop inventing, and continue reinventing.

The great sorting out:

*India Vs Indiana: Who is Exploiting whom?
*Where do companies start and stop: No more in a country or locality.
*From "Verticals" command and control to Collaborate and connect "Horizontalization".
*Multiple Identity disorder.
*Who owns what? (Even what I type?)
*Death of the salesman.

The Untouchables:

@'Special or specialized' and the 'Localized and anchored'. Sufferers are the middle-class: They need to re-skill themselves.
@collaborators and orchestrator.
@Synthesizers
@Explainers
@Leveragers
@Adapters
@Sustainable and renewable green people.

The right stuff:

- Learn how to learn
- Navigate
- CQ+PQ>IQ (C=Curiosity, P=Passion)
- Stressing liberate art: Connect history, art, politics, and science. (India is loosing on it)
- Right brain : Innovate, do what you love.
- The right education
- The right country

The quiet Crisis:

With wealthy parents kids get fat, dumb and lazy. Not looking for education but an MBA and IPO.
We are sleeping in an airmatress from which air is coming out.
Wealth will gravitate to those countries who get three basic things right:
=Infrastructure to connect as efficiently and speedily as possible, with the flat world platform
=Education programs and Knowledge skills to empower people to innovate and do value-added work
=Right governance: Tax policies, investment, trade laws, support,inspirational leadership.
Do your homework, or they will take your job.

GAPS:
o Number gap : Skilled people to replace
o Education gap : Resulting in number gap
o Ambition gap: Love to television, video and online games.
o Education gap at the bottom: Education for mass production jobs which are no more.
o Funding gap
o Infrastructure gap
Bottom line: Creative thinking and entrepreneurship.

Need of the hour:
~ Leadership : Employ-ability
~ Muscle building : Portable benefits and opportunities for lifelong learning : It makes you mobile and adaptable
~ Cushioning : Good fat cushions worth keeping: Social security.
~ Social activism
~ Parenting: Ready to administer tough love: off games, television and i pods and get children down to work.

How to cope:
'Out of clutter, find simplicity.
From discord, find harmony.
In the middle of difficulty, lies opportunity.'
- Albert Einstein

Rule I : Whatever can be done will be done, 'The only question is whether it will be done by you or to you' : (As the greeting card to Barkha: It is upto you to decide you want to be hammered or nailed)
Rule II : The most important competition today is between you and your own imagination.
Rule III : And the small shall act big...One way small companies flourish in the flat world is by learning to act really big. Imagination is necessary, but not sufficient. You have to be able to implement what you imagine. And the key to being small and acting big is being quick to take advantage of all the new tools for collaboration to reach farther, faster, wider and deeper.
Rule IV : And the big shall act small...One way that big companies learn to flourish in the flat world is by learning how to act really small by enabling their customers to act really big.
Rule V : The best companies are the best collaborators. In the flat world, more and more business will be done through collaborations within and between companies, for a very simple reason: The next layers of value creation-whether in technology, marketing, bio medicine, or manufacturing- are becoming so complex that no single firm or department is going to be able to master them alone.
Rule VI : In a flat world, the best companies stay healthy by getting regular chest X-rays and then selling the results to their clients.
Rule VII : The best companies outsource to win, not to shrink. They outsource to innovate faster and more cheaply in order to grow larger, gain market share, and hire more and different specialists - not to save money by firing more people.
Rule VIII: How you do things as a company matters more today than ever.
Rule IX : When the world goes flat - and you are feeling flattened -reach for a shovel and dig inside yourself. Don't try to build walls.

If it is not happening, it is because you are not doing. Walls simply aren't, what they used to be. Muhammad Yunus a Bangladeshi, Micro credit, Noble Peace Prize, in 2006.
Don't use 19th century economics, 20th century engineering to solve 21st century problems. Doing business well is very hard, and the conceptual frameworks and tools underlying the conduct of today's business are hopelessly outdated.

Now that we all have dogs hearing, we're so accessible, that we're inaccessible. We are everywhere-except where we actually are physically. Thanks to the flat world.

Rules to live in the internet world:
* Develop a thicker skin.
* Avoid internet addiction.
* Keep it all in perspective.
* Let your kids know what world they are living in.

There is a parallel unflat world with:
# The sick people : who are yet to know, yet to come up, the yet to know
# Too dis-empowered
# Too frustrated
# Too many Toyota's (So much of imitating the rich, and lots of junks created)


Free Trade is God's diplomacy. There is no other certain way of uniting people in the bonds of peace. - Richard Cobden, 1857 (British politician)


To prevent conflict, things are done JIT, from various places, by the best people, and and author has described 'The dell theory of conflict prevention'

We bring good things to life. It is used by all Infosys Versus Al- Qaeda. What we put it to matters.

Thus in a way we are too personally insecure.

11/9 versus 9/11, is a matter to ponder. From Ebay, India to the curse of oil.

Imagination is more important than Knowledge. - Albert Einstein

Look at the good examples. "One good example is worth a thousand therories."

The flattening of the world, has provided us with new opportunities, new challenges, new partners, but also with new dangers. We need to find the right balance among all of these. Become global citizen. If you don't visit a bad neighborhood, it might visit you.

Remember: The most important competition is now with yourself - making sure that you are always striving to get the most out of your own imagination, and then acting on it.

The world is now becoming flattened. I didn't start it and you can't stop it, except at a great cost to human development and your own future. But we can tilt it, and shape it, for better or for worse.