The World is Flat - Module 5

As Friedman so fluently explains how the global playing field has been made “flat”, he also so astutely explains coming together of technologies and minds in order to bring even more change. 

In his theory so aptly titled the “Triple Convergence” Friedman explains that step one is the actual merging of players, or technologies, that are all on the same playing field. As he describes a product by Konica Minolta called the “Bizhub” that can scan, fax, e-mail, print and copy, we can visualize the concept. 

            The second step of “Triple Convergence” is the utilization of new technologies to allow us to do regular business in a new way. Just as his airline tickets from Southwest were able to be printed out at home and scanned at the terminal, it is a new way of applying this technology to traditional business.

            The third step, and probably one of the most perplexing for humans is the introduction of new players on this “flat” playing field that develop more concepts and capabilities of doing business. Field says, “I believe [it] is the most important force shaping global economics and politics in the early twenty-first century.”

            And considering the heart of the third step of his “Triple Convergence” theory, are the new members joining our technological playing field. As more Chinese, Indian and Soviet nationals are quickly entering the field and trying to make their own mark in what we would call our world, we must require that we attempt to be conscientious players. We must do our best to ensure our own success while ensuring the fair treatment and proper growth of economics and business in this new period.

            Considering the situation of the government of the state of Indiana and the contract won by the company in India to find a way to more effectively be able to process unemployment compensation to workers, we must ask ourselves to fairly inspect the situation and to determine whether this company in India was exploited in any way. From what can be determined, the Indian company did not feel that they were exploited in any way, in fact they still do business with America. The state of Indiana did not feel that they were exploited by the Indian company as they commented on how nice the company was to do business with.  Could it have been then, a matter of mutual exploitation? This term would seem foreign and unobjective, but isn’t this what most business transactions are based on? I do business with you for what you can offer me and for what I can gain from you. You do business with me from what you can give to me in exchange for what you can get from me. Friedman called it “horizontalization in globalization”. 

            One main commodity that must be guarded and protected, however, is the commodity of intellectual property. Simply, intellectual property should belong to whoever develops it. But lines get blurred in our technological day when the question of ownership must be answered. In a case against Yahoo, the family of Lance Corporal Justin M. Ellsworth attempted to gain intellectual property upon his death. They wished access to his electronic files that Yahoo held. We may want to respond emotionally and side with the family, but consider the precedence it would set for others who might be found incompetent or who forfeit their rights and someone decides that they would like to have access to their knowledge. It’s almost the stuff that comic book villains and hero’s are made up of, but it must be considered, and will soon be part of our normal vocabulary just as other concepts have been introduced out of necessity and are easily accepted today.

IT Job Interview - Module 4

     I walked into a tiny corner office. There were two desks, but only one of them was occupied. There were no extra chairs for me to sit in, so I waited patiently while the young lady on the phone had a moment to greet me.

     While I waited I took in the rest of the scene. This shared office attached to another office more regal and grander by comparison. But it was obvious that this was where the   majority of actual work took place. It was obvious that the other desk typically was the home of a fastidious person who was also quite astute at their job. Post-it notes were on the calendar reminding of appointments and various other important dates. A professional woman of about 25 was on the phone, and talking with her hands at the same time. She motioned for me to sit in the seat that went with this other desk. So I did, and waited for her to close up her conversation.

     When she finally ended her conversation, she turned to me, and greeted me by name. She knew who I was and had been expecting me. Not waiting for me to muddle the air with information that we had already discussed on the phone. She went on to remind me that her schedule was very tight, and that it shouldn’t take long for her to fill me in on the intricacies of her job.

     She explained that basically, her entire job could be summed up in one task, making the boss look good. It was her job to screen calls that would waste his time, and to keep him focused on doing his job. She explained that all of the office computers were networked together on site, and that they were also networked with other offices in Tennessee, Texas, England and Africa. It was obvious that time was very important to her business, as the desk top on her computer had five different clocks, each one denoting the time at one of the other offices.

     She quickly explained the nature of how this network system worked. “It’s like a huge, massive filing cabinet.” She explained. “I can file something in my ‘drawer’ and someone in England can pick it up, and work on it there. And if we need to, I can have real life conferences with those other workers.” She said that this really did help to allay confusion in language and interpretation when working on a project together. The only thing is that you have to be aware of the time.

     “Often, we’ll run out of time, just because a lack of awareness of where the other person is on the clock.” There phones are internet linked, so that these remote offices can have the same local number as her office and so that customers can reach these other offices without really knowing. “This gives us a much longer work day here, without having to pay for it.” She explains with satisfaction. This had been her idea, and was the most recent reason for a bonus that she received.

     Her job among all of the other organizational and communication related tasks really is to keep her boss on task. Her boss learned a long time ago, that he is easily distracted and that he does most of his best work when surrounded by others working also.

     So he set up his office right next to his assistants, and it is her job every morning to come in early and to lay out his day. He is able to make better use of his time, by simply relying on her to schedule his time for him, and to keep focused on one task at a time.

     Before I knew it, I was gathering my things, and saying goodbye. As I glanced at the local time on her desk top, I learned that all of this had been completed in just over five minutes. As I saw myself out the door, I could hear her on the phone already scheduling a meeting and getting all of the other staff members ready for a conference call including her boss.

     This most definitely was a position that required every skill that she had and every piece of equipment and technology that she could apply.

The World is Flat – Module 3

            Offshoring is to Outsourcing what a ship is to a rudder. This analogy is a fine way to help to define the importance of offshoring. As outsourcing has provided and encouraged open communication and trade, it has turned the direction of manufacturing and literally moved it. As companies are looking for a way to continue competing in this new economy, offshoring has become a vital result of outsourcing. “Offshoring… is when a company takes one of its factories that is operating” in one place “and moves the whole factory offshore” or to another country.  Outsourcing is taking a function that your company was doing in-house and having another company perform that task, and then reintegrating that work into back into your normal operations.

            Offshoring is the magnification of outsourcing, but is also a direct result of it as well. As companies learned the value and the resource in utilizing skills from across the globe, their minds were opened to different cultures and different views. As the manufacturing world became more competitive, it was only natural for them to consider other avenues of manufacturing. It seems only logical now for them to consider moving manufacturing plants where “cheaper labor, lower taxes, subsidized energy and lower health-care costs” can be found.

            In between manufacturing and the consumer lies an intricate consideration in the supply chain. Just as the supply chain has had to morph to accommodate offshoring, Wal-Mart has had to morph their actual supply chain in order to remain the competitive marketer that it is. Wal-Mart, already understanding the value of computers at work and the applications of the use of the internet looked to the computer to meet their unique and individual supply chain needs.

            “Wal-Mart’s theory was that the more information everyone had about what customers were pulling off the shelves, the more efficient Wal-Mart’s buying would be, the quicker its suppliers could adapt to changing market demand.” By incorporating point-of-sale terminals and installing an elaborate satellite system suppliers can link into their private extranet system and how products are moving and when or if it might need to increase production.

            And what the supply chain is to Wal-Mart, Google is to all other companies.  “Never before in the history of the planet have so many people…had the ability to find so much information about so many things and about so many other people.” 

            By providing information and translation, Google is continuing to “flatten” the world and bring people closer together and more quickly. It was Google founders Brin and Page who developed a formula that ranked web pages according to how many other web pages were linked to them. Google then was able to better link web pages with content and provide the better answers to searches the consumers were making. 

            The no class, education, linguistic or virtual boundaries exist in Google, and this equal access to information makes it a huge player in our newly flattened world. 

As so eloquently said by Alan Cohen, the then vice president of Airspace, “Google is like God. God is wireless. God is everywhere, and God sees everything. Any questions…ask Google.”

The World is Flat – Module 2

Software that is utilized in business to increase or streamline the ability of your company or department to do business is workflow software. It is important because of its design to make your work world “flat”. The first work flow software breakthrough was e-mail. This form of communication transcended typical communication and brought business closer together in time, literally, and in space, figuratively.

The windows enabled PC can now enable workers to communicate with workers and departments across the globe. Through the use of SMTP or Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, workers do not have to worry about application compatibility, they can simply communicate without attention to such details.

Open Source software is an answer to big corporations and their closed door approach to software development. This community developed software is important because of the free nature in which it is created and developed encourages and promotes growth and the sharing of knowledge and understanding. This David versus Goliath approach to software development is a winning concept which allows many “little guys” to have a part in a great movement.

Who’s to say what drives “Open Source software”, but it works, and it works extremely well. The drive and application to which independent workers, educators and free-lancers are able to work and provide good product is overwhelming and a great testament to the human spirit and its desire to excel.

Outsourcing means “taking some specific, but limited, function that your company was doing in-house … and having another company perform that exact same function for you and then reintegrating their work back into your overall operation.”

Outsourcing became popular in the 1980s, and during the dot com boom, outsourcing was a terrific way for a company to be able to compete and grow. But even in the treacherous atmosphere of the dot com bust, outsourcing became even more popular as companies were frantically looking for answers to problems that they had never been faced with. 

Popularization and growth in outsourcing was catapulted in the Y2K era. The fear of global shut down and a following crisis was feared due to the reliance on computer technology. The insurmountable task of upgrading ever computer and every system to one that would be able to recognize the turning of the year 2000 was outsourced to computer technicians and geeks in India. This relationship has blossomed through the years and has raised the level of the opinions of businesses regarding Indian business and has heightened their awareness of Indian capabilities and drive.

We can only admire and look up to the favorable atmosphere in which change was anticipated and harbored in India. As much as we can say that India might have been lucky in many ways. It was also prepared. They were able to reap a massive harvest upon which they had sown education, application, and foresight.

“Fortune favors the prepared mind.” And in this case, Fortune definitely favored India.

The World is Flat – Module 1

            The experiences and gathered wisdom of Thomas Friedman are shared in his book The World is Flat. In this book he asserts that the different metamorphosis of time in relation to business and globalization can be divided into three main categories. Globalization 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0. The first, globalization 1.0 is the time from when Columbus set sail to reach the Indies by traveling west. Of course we know that he did not end up finding the Indies to buy spice, but ended up in the Americas where he found the American Aborigines. Friedman calls this globalization 1.0 because from Columbus to around 1800 countries were globalizing. Trade between countries was becoming common and even relied upon in most cultures.

            Globalization 2.0 covers the time between the 1800s and about the year 2000. This is what Friedman defines as the time when companies globalized. As countries had already established trade conditions and trade between them had advanced to go past diplomatic and political ideals and into companies dealing with one another without the aid or hindrances of countries.

            We have just entered the era of globalization 3.0. And this appears to be where Friedman and his wise observances come into use. Globalization 3.0 is when individuals have finally entered global trading. Globalization 3.0, Friedman says, allows “individuals to collaborate and compete globally” in what he calls a flat world platform. This flat world that he often refers to is that the “playing field” or advantages have been made flat, or fair or even for everyone. 

            In this flat world platform that Friedman asserts the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 has such a ripple effect on the world that it is felt all of the way to India and China. The fall of the wall tipped the level of power from the socialistic and communistic rule to the “democratic, consensual, free-market-oriented governance and away from those advocating authoritarian rule with central planned economies.” This profound and public move symbolized to everyone in a single generation the breaking of barriers and the establishment of liberties that continue to have dramatic affects on politics, economy, fashion and cultures.

            The importance of the story of the move of Netscape to go public must be coupled with comments regarding the product of the Internet. As much as the magnanimous invention of the Internet by Berner’s-Lee, the internet would be basically useless without the invention and public use of internet browsers.

            Internet users went quickly from states of amazed anticipation of what the internet could do and provide to expected anticipation in which they no longer were typically surprised and thrilled with what found, but rather now internet users expect to find prompt and reliable access to information that would have taken weeks or months in the Globalization 2.0 era.

            How quickly the human race evolves once given a chance. Just looking at our own history, it is easy to see that once simple barriers are broken and passed, there are always going to be new barriers and hurdles to overcome. The human race is always attempting to find the next limitation so that they can try to find a way to conquer and benefit from their learning. As much as Friedman’s book is about the study of globalization, all of this can be easily attributed to the competitive spirit of the human race.