Thomas Friedmann's The World Is Flat

When most people here the phrase “the world is flat” they think that it’s an illogical statement. Thomas Friedmann a famous New York Times columnist wrote his international best-selling book “The World is Flat” which analyzes globalization in the 21st century. The phrase The World is Flat is a metaphor for viewing the world as a flat playing field where competitors from all over the world have an equal opportunity. In 2007 Friedmann gave a keynote address at MIT’s in which he gives an in depth analysis of his book and addresses the topic of globalization in our world today. He divides globalization into three eras.

1. Globalization 1.0 he says started in 1492 and continued up until the early 1800s. He described this era as people only

How well people “horizontalize” or collaborate on this platform will produce the most important productivity gains and the most competitive advantage. He says that people have to learn to adjust from interacting vertically to interacting horizontally. A real world example he uses for this is his experience with Southwest Airlines. He explains how people by downloading their boarding passes online are interacting with Southwest horizontally and are able to capture 60 minutes of productivity by now not having to wait to board or go through the hassles of checking in. He says that the people who do it best are going to capture enormous productivity.

Another thing that I really agreed with was his ideas about Liberal arts schools. Friedmann says that Liberal Arts schools are so vital because they promotes imaginative thinking. He then says Innovation comes from having 2 or more specialties applying the framework of one to the framework of the other. He uses examples of Steve Jobs who took a calligraphy class in college which led to the innovate typeface on the apple

As part of her move her and her sister decided they where going to open a clothing store in Johannesburg. My mom’s plan was to buy women’s clothing from the US and ship it to South Africa. I was originally surprised at how easy it was for her to order the clothing, have it put on a container and shipped to her store in Johannesburg. She also has the ability to operate the store whenever she comes back to New York to visit me. This also connected to how in class we spoke about Containerization and how it shifted globalization around the world. When my mom was shipping her products she was torn between whether it would be easier to fly the products or have them shipped on a boat. Ultimatley the cost of shipping by air was too much, and the cost of using the container was reasonably