The world we live in

I was not going to blog today but went through a Tom FriedMan talk on " The world is Flat" It was essentially a promo for the book but ended up creating 2 1/2 pages of notes.

I don't want to trash these and forget, Why not blog em and remember em for future reference?

Tom Starts by quoting Nandan Nikekani " The global economic playing field is being leveled and Americans are not ready", And how he interpreted this to mean that the economic field is being flattened and is a great achievement for Human enterprise. I totally agree on this Yay for the free market economy.

What is flattening? How is the flattening taking place?

Mr Freidman cites the examples of Jet Blue reservation systems where working Moms assist customers with their reservations from home. Balagalore BPO operations and the chinese equivalent for the Japanese consumers; And Mc Donalds consolidating orderprocessing in colorado springs.

He goes on to describe 3 Eras of globalization that shrunk the world

1. 1492 -1820 shrinking the world from size L to size M. The primary agent of change begin the nation state citing the examples of colonization, new world discovery and awareness
2. 1820-2000 shrinking from size M to size S. The primary agent being organizations and corporations spreading out in search of markets and resources
3. 2000 onwards shrinking from size S to tiny. The primary agent being the individual.

He argues that this ability of individuals to affect change facilitates and necessitates change

Freidmans proposition attributes the flattening to 3 basic attributes; 6 further additions and a tremendous multiplier

• Fall of the berlin wall: changes the perceptions of individuals and organizations breaking down the north south and east west divide giving rise to global. This was further facilitated by the rise of Windows (I believe Microsoft got some publicity here) basically the PC providing the first tool for flattening.

The PC provided a versatile tool for authoring information words; pictures; music and video.

"Enabled digital representation of everything"

• Rise of the browser enabled sharing of the authored content. Facilitated cheaply sharing of information and communication. This then triggered a huge investment into the Fibre optic networks and completely connected the world. He cites the difference between the railroads and the fibre optic backbone as " Railroads allowed americans to ride free; New network allowed Indians, Chinese and Russians to ride free"
• " Workflow" defined as protocols and pipes that allow work to flow. Connection and the PC enables the creation of a platform for collaboration.

• The 3 factors above provided the foundation for th efolowing 6 that acted as enhancers

• Outsourcing: Introduced by the Y2K

• Offshoring : Prompted by the chinese joining the WTO

• Uploading: Advances enablign individuals to promote themselves globally eg: Blogging; open sourcing; pod casting and wikipedia

• Supply Chaining efficiencies epitomized by walmart.
• Insourcing as epitomized by vertical integration of delivery companies transforming into logistic services companies like Airborne express, UPS etc..
• Informing: Empowered search of our own data; drilldown into history. Example TIVO is informing for television programs
• "The steriods" Advances and innovations in storage, VOIP, wireless and processing acted as the booster and a multiplier accelerating the flattening process.

He talks about the tripple convergence where the flatteners converged and tipped the economy into a well connected world with a different dynamic.

1. Convergence of the flatteners. advances in technology, helped outsourcing which in turn boosted offshoring. leading to gains in supply chaining and insourcing.
2. Organizations and individuals learned to adapt the habits and behaviors to take advantage of the platform. This has lead to horizontalization. Typical example southwest airlines replacing the ticket agent with eticketing which was replaced by self printing at home. Essentially replacing a paid employee with a machine and effectively changing the customers behavior to self serve at home saving equipment costs.
3. 3 Billion people from India, China and eastern bloc arriving at the convergence zone.

RESULTS: Vertical to Horizontal; creating a complex environment that promotes competition allows transparant connection and collaboration.

He concluded that we were blowing away the ceilings, walls anf the floor

No limits on uploading ( no ceiling)

No limits on outsourcing/offshoring (no walls)

No Limits to informing ( no floors) cannot bury anythins

Isint this exciting?

This brings many questions

1. What are the flaws in this model?

2. What do we not know?

3. What can we do about it?

4. How accurate is this theory?

5. If not this why is the world imploding? if it ever is?

So long for now

:-)