What should managers learn from the book The World is Flat/Tomas Friedman - Essay Example

Friedman tells us about the ten “Flatteners”, or the forces that made the world flat: where growth vectors and knowledge hierarchies are more horizontal instead of vertical and political boundaries have become increasingly insignificant. Chapter 2 of his book is solely devoted to the identification and definition of these forces, of which the first is the fall of the Berlin wall. The fall of this wall tipped the balance in favor of democratic and free-market oriented governance, and weakened totalitarian rules of centrally controlled economies.

It bound the world into a seamless whole where PCs as well as basic inter-operable platforms introduced new methods of dissemination of information, and information is power. Wider access to knowledge made the world a flatter place with increased opportunities of growth and productivity for the educated masses, irrespective of geographic location. Netscape going public with its browser application is the second flattener described by Friedman. The computers and their connectivity afforded by Netscape formed the vehicle through which Internet boom was ushered in.

This boom resulted in over-investment in the dot com bubble, and the subsequent excess of investment in the laying of fiber-optic cables, which dramatically increased connectivity between various parts of the world, India and the U.S. for instance, making it flat. Work flow software is Friedmans next flattener, which enabled disparate computer systems and software applications of different entities to interact smoothly. He gives the examples of Microsoft and Paypal to demonstrate their emergence as standards in their respective fields.

Because of this standardization, virtual global offices can be created, where each part of the task can be smoothly given out to a different part of the world, without transfer hiccups and subsequent reassembly takes place at the headquarters. The fourth flattener is open-sourcing where source codes for various