The World is Flat

Those of us waiting to get Thomas Friedman’s new book, The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, enjoyed an early preview of his perspective in "It’s A Flat World, After All" an article in the April 3 Sunday New York Times Magazine excerpted from Tom’s new book. My God, this guy can write! He is a master of the memorable phrase – but it is more than style, there is real substance here as well.

Tom begins with an admission: "I wish I could say I saw it all coming. Alas, I encountered the flattening of the world quite by accident." By the flattening of the world, he means the pervasive impact of globalization (actually, Globalization 3.0 in his terminology) – the leveling of the playing field created by the systematic removal of barriers to movement across a growing portion of the globe.

In many respects, Tom’s article (and book) is meant as a wake-up call to the U.S. about the implications of the leveling of the playing field:

But Globalization 3.0 not only differs from the previous eras in how it is shrinking and flattening the world and in how it is empowering individuals. It is also different in that Globalization 1.0 and 2.0 were driven primarily by European and American companies and countries. But going forward, this will be less and less true. Globalization 3.0 is not only going to be driven more by individuals but also by a much more diverse — non-Western, nonwhite — group of individuals. In Globalization 3.0, you are going to see every color of the human rainbow take part.

He then adds:

When the world is flat, you can innovate without having to emigrate. This is going to get interesting. We are about to see creative destruction on steroids.

Toward the end, he really pushes the alarm button:

As a person who grew up during the cold war, I’ll always remember driving down the highway and listening to the radio, when suddenly the music would stop and a grim-voiced announcer would come on the air and say: ”This is a test. This station is conducting a test of the Emergency Broadcast System.” And then there would be a 20-second high-pitched siren sound. Fortunately, we never had to live through a moment in the cold war when the announcer came on and said, ”This is a not a test.” That, however, is exactly what I want to say here: ”This is not a test.”

Tom’s article certainly whets my appetite for his new book – its official release date is tomorrow (April 5) and I can’t wait to read more of his perspective. I certainly agree with his analysis of the leveling of the playing field on a global scale and I support his view that Americans (not to mention Europeans) are much too complacent about the implications of these trends.  I am hoping, though, that he spends more time in his book on  what companies should do about this.  His article doesn’t really address this – he talks mainly about public policy responses, in particular, the need to improve educational programs.

At the business level this gets very interesting. Who will create value and who will destroy value in this new world? To be provocative, let me assert that, if properly harnessed, the globalization trends Tom so eloquently discusses may in fact generate new sources of advantage that are far more powerful in terms of value creation on a global scale.  This in fact is the focus of the new book that JSB and I wrote – The Only Sustainable Edge.  Tom beat us to most bookstores (but not Amazon, where you can buy our book today, even though Tom’s book is still listed as a pre-order!) by a couple of weeks. That actually may be OK – the way I read it, Tom sets up the challenge in very compelling terms while JSB and I help executives to understand what it takes to turn a level playing field to their advantage.