Week 3

Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat considers how the world has become smaller in the way that everything now is electronic. Globalization 3.0 started around year 2000. In the two other eras of globalization, the dynamic forces were countries and companies globalizing, the dynamic force in globalization 3.0 was the newfound power of individuals to collaborate and compete globally. Internet brought information into people’s homes and offices and it became easier to communicate across borders.

According to Friedman, the world has been flattened by the convergence of ten major political events, innovations and companies.
1: The New Age of Creativity: When the walls came down and the windows went up.
This age started the 9th of November 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell. This opened people’s eyes to look at the world as a single marked.
2: The New Age of Connectivity: When the web went around and the Netscape went public
In the mid 1990’s the PC-Windows era had reached a plateau. People could create their own content in a digital form, but they were not able to send it around. The new age of connectivity started with the invention of the Internet and the World Wide Web
3: Work Flow Software. Work flow is a combination of the PC and e-mail which made this possible.
4: Uploading: Harnessing the power of community. This is the most disruptive force as it made it possible for communities to upload and collaborating on online projects such as the community-developed software movement,
5: Outsourcing: Y2K. Outsourcing means to take some specific, but limited, function that your company does, make another company do the same thing and then reintegrate their work.
6: Offshoring: Running with gazelles, eating with lions. When a company relocates a physical manufacturing for the advantage of lower cost, they are offshoring.
7: Supply-Chaining: Eating Sushi in Arkansas. Supply-chaining is how companies now can move a product from the supplier to the customer in an effective way.
8: Insourcing: What the guys in funny brown shorts are really doing. Insourcing is the opposite of outsourcing in the way companies, small or big have the opportunity to sell, manufacture or buy what they needed on the Internet and save money.
9: In-forming: Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Web Search. People have all the information needed in their homes by a couple of clicks on their computer. Google is the most used search engine. In-forming is the individual’s personal analogue to uploading outsourcing, insourcing, supply-chaining and offshoring.
10: The Steroids: digital, mobile, personal and virtual. Everything from photography, entertainment, communication and word processing can now be digitalized.

However it must be considered that most of the world’s population are living in poverty. Developing new technology demands money.