The World Is Flat –Implications for YOU

Not Your Father’s World...

…or your Mother’s either!

“There is no job that is America’s God-given right

anymore.”

—Carly Fiorina/HP/01.08.2004

“When I was growing up, my parents used to say to me: ‘Finish your dinner—people in China are starving.’ I, by contrast, find myself wanting to say to my daughters:

‘Finish your homework—people in China and India are

starving for your job.’” —Thomas Friedman/06.24.2004

The World Is Flat

• The Triple Convergence– Lots of Flatteners In Last 10 Years– New Skills and New Playing Field– New Competition (India and China)

By Thomas L. Friedman (2005)

New York Times journalist, three timewinner of Pulitzer Prize. Advocates formiddle east peace, green environment and globalization.

Globalization1.0*: 1492-1800Countries globalizing, Shrank world from a size Large to Medium

Globalization2.0**: 1800-2000Companies globalizing, Shrank world from a size Medium to Small

Globalization3.0***: 2000+Individuals collaborating & competing globally, Shrank world from a size Small to Tiny

The Ten Flatteners

• # 1 – 11 / 9 / 89• The Fall of the Berlin

Wall– World Competition

The Ten Flatteners

• # 2 - 8 / 9 / 95• Netscape Going Public

– Internet as THE media for information

– 4 years after Berners-Lee invented the Web

– Universal usability, accessibility and

– interoperability of the Web– Win 95 shipped 15 days later– Number of Internet users doubling

every 53 days

The Ten Flatteners

# 3 - Spawned Internet bubble

– PayPal and EBay– MS Office– Communication costs plummeted

The Ten Flatteners

• # 4 – Open-Sourcing• Self Organized Collaboration

– Apache as backend of Blackboard– Mozilla / Firefox– Blogs– Wikipedia– Not controlled by corporations or

Government

The Ten Flatteners

# 5 - Outsourcing• Talented competent programmers and

engineers who will work for less• Economic imperative• Outsource everything you possibly can

The Ten Flatteners

# 6 - Offshoring• Movement of Entire

Organizations Overseas

– Dell

• Not just manufacturing

– Management – Medical – Consulting – Accounting

The Ten Flatteners

• # 7 – Supply-Chaining

• Interconnectiveness of Suppliers and Users

– WalMart– Dell

The Ten Flatteners

# 8 - Insourcing• UPS is not only shipping

parcels, but also providing smart business solutions.

• UPS fixes laptops for companies to speed up service. 3 day turn-around, instead of week (s) for product repairs.

• Take orders from Nike.com, fill the order from a warehouse staffed and operated by UPS and ship with UPS.

The Ten Flatteners

• # 9 - In-Forming• Have You Googled Today?

– Everyone is now a researcher– Google – now 1 billion

searches per day– Soon “everything” will be

searchable

The Ten Flatteners

• # 10 – The Steroids

•“Making collaboration digital, mobile, personal, virtual” –Carly Fiorina

– Computing capabilities - including speed, I/O rate and storage capacity

– IM and file sharing – BitTorrent, Kazaa – VoIP – Skype – Video Conferencing – HP & SKG – Advanced graphics – from video games – Wireless – communicate with anyone

from anywhere

Globalization1.0*: Countries globalizingGlobalization2.0**: Companies globalizingGlobalization3.0***: Individuals collaborating & competing globally

*1492-1800**1800-2000***2000+

Source: Tom Friedman/The World Is FlatThe Individual Matters !The Individual Matters !

“In a global economy, the government cannot give

anybody a guaranteed success story, but you can give people the tools to make the most of

their own lives.” —WJC, from Philip Bobbitt,

The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History

“Over the last decade the biggest employment gains came in occupations that rely on people skills and emotional intelligence and among jobs that require imagination and creativity. … Trying to preserve existing jobs will prove futile—trade and technology will transform the economy whether we like it or not. Americans will be better off if they strive to move up the hierarchy of human talents. That’s where our future lies.” —Michael Cox, Richard Alm and Nigel Holmes/“Where the Jobs Are”/NYT/05.13.2004

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one

most responsive to change.” —Charles Darwin

“People who succeed are those who are the best at ‘Plan B’.” —The New Scientist/09.05

“How we feel about the evolving future tells us who we are as individuals and as a civilization: Do we search for stasis—a regulated, engineered world? Or do we embrace dynamism—a world of constant creation, discovery and competition? Do we value stability and control? Or evolution and learning? Do we think that progress requires a central blueprint? Or do we see it as a decentralized, evolutionary process? Do we see mistakes as permanent disasters? Or the correctable byproducts of experimentation? Do we crave predictability? Or relish surprise? These two poles, stasis and dynamism, increasingly define our political, intellectual and cultural landscape.” —Virginia Postrel, The Future and Its Enemies

“You do not want to be considered the best of the

best. You want to be considered the only ones who do what you do! “

—Jerry Garcia – Grateful Dead

Future Skills

• Think Solutions• Problem Solving

• Think Interaction• Mobile and Virtual

• Think Specialist• Application Specialist

• Think Flexible• Multiple Skill Sets

The most important ability isto learn how to learn

Rule #1: When the world goes flat—and you are feeling flattened—reach for a shovel and dig inside yourself. Don’t try to build walls.Rule #2: And the small shall act big. … One way small companies flourish in the flat world is by learning to act really big. 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 #3: 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 #4: 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, biomedicine, or manufacturing—are becoming so complex that no single firm or department is going to be able to master them alone.Rule #5: In a flat world, the best companies stay healthy by getting regular chest X-rays and then selling the results to their clients.Rule #6: 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 #7: Outsourcing isn’t just for Benedict Arnolds. It’s also for idealists.

Source: Tom Friedman/The World Is Flat