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| 9/07/05 | | Thomas Friedman's talk on how the world is flat |
In Thomas Friedman’s talk to MIT (http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/266/) about his new book, The World is Flat, he argues that there have been three phases of globalisation. Phase 1 is between 1492 and 1800 and was dominated by nations spreading their influence across the globe. Phase 2 was well established by 2000 and was dominated by global corporations. Phase 3 was triggered by a fluke of investment around 2003–04. The dot.com boom fuelled an unprecedented investment in optic fibre communication infrastructure across the globe. Individuals from Mumbai to Moreton Bay were now collaborating in new way which were previously impossible—just think of Skype, Groove, wikis, blogs, Google. This 3rd phase is dominated by individuals.
Anyone reading this blog is probably operating in this 3rd phase. For myself I have numerous collaborators whom I’ve never met face to face in Canada, Spain, USA. It seems to me that new knowledge-based business ventures must immediately conceive themselves as individuals with global connections. Friedman provides many entertaining examples of how hopelessly ‘phase 2’ his think had been and that a new mind-shift if required to effectively operate in this current environment.
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Comments
- There was also overinvestment in satellite bandwidth and these will fall out of the sky in 10 years time.
- Stanford Google became Google Inc and Skype/Kazaa et al. will gel into new global entities too. When they finish the mergers and acquisitions phase we will know if Friedman is flogging a dead horse (his globalization franchise) or a truth.
Posted by: tt at July 9, 2005 12:37 PM