Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat - Essay Example

23 June 2008 The World is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century recalls his journey to Bangalore, India where he witnessed how the world has been flattened to create a level playing field for each competitor in the global business arena. In order to emphasize and delimit this phenomenon of globalization to the others, he differentiates it from the time when globalization is hindered by governments and during the time when multinationals are the driving factors to integration.

Friedman cited the "ten flatteners" which become most influential in the 21st century globalization: the collapse of the Berlin Wall which allows more players to join the economic mainstream; Netscape and Web which promotes digitization; workflow software which functions without the help of any human being; open sourcing which allows people to contribute and collaborate on online projects; outsourcing which allows companies to divide task and distribute them to the most efficient providers; offshoring which allows outsourcing services to other countries; supply chaining which uses technology to administer and aid in each of the process of the company's value chain; in-sourcing where companies go beyond providing its major service for another business organization; in-forming which comprises search engine providers such as Google that allows the global community to search information; and "the steroids" which are personal devices like mobile phones, iPods, personal digital assistants, instant messaging, and voice over internet protocol that allows the global community to have access to the digital information.

Aside from these flatteners, Friedman also mentions the "triple convergence" which aids the "ten flatteners." These are: the convergence of the individual flattener to one another which makes them complementary; horizontal convergence in business organizations; and the opening up of previously communist republics.Works CitedFriedman, Thomas. "The World is Flat." 2005. Farrar, Straus and Giroux: New York.