An Outline of Reason

Regular readers have encountered my recent read of The World is Flat, by Thomas Friedman. Rather than blather on about it, I will instead share with you an outline I constructed of the book. This is a roadmap to the gems of insight Friedman provides. Scan it. Look it over again. Then let your imagination run loose (not wild!). Consider reading the book. Then get the book at the library, bookstore, or from Amazon.  I just ordered a used paperback for 36-cents plus $3.99 for shipping! Can’t beat that price.

This is an important book. Don’t miss reading it.

Outline: The World Is Flat, by Thomas L. Friedman

Copyrighted 2005; revised 2006 and 2007 for paperback edition

1. How the World Became Flat
1. Snuck up on us; while we were sleeping
2. The ten forces that flattened the world

                                                              i.      Demise of the Berlin Wall, 11/9/89: The New Age of Creativity: when the Walls Came Down and the Windows Went Up

                                                            ii.      The New Age of Connectivity, 8/9/95: When the Web went around and Netscape went public

                                                          iii.      Work Flow Software

                                                          iv.      Uploading: harnessing the power of communities

                                                            v.      Outsourcing: Y2K

                                                          vi.      Off-shoring: Running with Gazelles, Eating with Lions

                                                        vii.      Supply-Chaining: East Sushi in Arkansas

                                                      viii.      Insourcing: What the guys in funny brown shorts are really doing (UPS)

                                                          ix.      In-forming: Google, Yahoo!, MSN Web Search

                                                            x.      The Steroids: Digital, Mobile, Personal, and Virtual

3. The Triple Convergence:

                                                              i.      Convergence 1: Work flow software and hardware converged in a way that enabled Konica Minolta to offer scanning, emailing, printing, faxing, and copying all from the same machine

                                                            ii.      Convergence 2: horizontal integration of sales, delivery of goods and production of same; just in time inventory; coming together of all 10 flatteners into the flat world, habit, business practices, etc.

                                                          iii.      Convergence 3: New players on a new playing field developing new processes and habits for horizontal collaboration; 3 billion new players all around the globe now rule global economics and politics in the 21^st Century; introducing an era in which technology will literally transform every aspect of business, every aspect of life and every aspect of society.

4. The Great Sorting Out

i.        India versus Indiana: who is exploiting who?

ii.      Where do companies stop and start?

iii.    From Command and Control to Collaborate and Connect

iv.    Multiple identity disorder

v.      Who owns what?

vi.    Death of the Salesmen  

2. America and the Flat World
1. America and Free Trade: is Ricardo (1772-1823) still right?
2. The Untouchables: finding the new middle

                                                              i.      Great collaborators and orchestrators

                                                            ii.      Great synthesizers

                                                          iii.      Great Explainers

                                                          iv.      Great leveragers

                                                            v.      Great adapters

                                                          vi.      Green People

                                                        vii.      Passionate personalizers

                                                      viii.      Math lovers

                                                          ix.      Great localizers

3. The Right Stuff: Tubas and Test Tubes

                                                              i.      Which class to I take to learn how to learn?

                                                            ii.      Navigation

                                                          iii.      Passion and curiosity is greater than IQ

                                                          iv.      Stressing Liberal Arts

                                                            v.      Right Brain

                                                          vi.      Tubas and Test Tubes: mixing/converging arts with education/science: creates innovations, creativity

                                                        vii.      The right country: America has all it needs to be the best in the world; we just have to understand it better and use it

4. The Quiet Crisis: America not aware of its non-competitiveness

                                                              i.      Dirty Little Secret #1: The numbers gap

                                                            ii.      Dirty Little Secret #2: The education gap at the top

                                                          iii.      Dirty Little Secret #3: The ambition gap

                                                          iv.      Dirty Little Secret #4: The education gap at the bottom

                                                            v.      Dirty Little Secret #5: The funding gap

                                                          vi.      Dirty Little Secret #6: The infrastructure gap

5. This is Not a Test

                                                              i.      Leadership

                                                            ii.      Muscles

                                                          iii.      Good Fat: cushions worth keeping

                                                          iv.      Parenting

3. Developing Countries and the Flat World
1. The Virgin of Guadalupe

                                                              i.      Introspection

                                                            ii.      I can get it for you wholesale

                                                          iii.      I can only get it for you retail

                                                          iv.      Follow the Leaping Leprechauns

                                                            v.      Culture Matters: Glocalization

                                                          vi.      The Intangible Things

                                                        vii.      Many Speeds, One Direction

4. Companies and the Flat world - How Companies Cope

                                                              i.      Rule #1: When the world is flat, whatever can be done will be done. The only question is whether it will be done by you or to you.

                                                            ii.      Rule #2: This is an outgrowth of #1: Because we are in a world where whatever can be done will be done, the most important competition today is between you and your own imagination.

                                                          iii.      Rule #3: And the small shall act big…One way small companies flourish in the flat world is by learning to act really big. Imagination is necessary, but not sufficient. You have to be able to implement what you imagine. 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.

                                                          iv.      Rule #4: 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.

                                                            v.      Rule #5: 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.

                                                          vi.      Rule #6: In a flat world, the best companies stay healthy by getting regular chest X-rays and then selling the results to their clients.

                                                        vii.      Rule #7: The best companies outsource to win, not 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.

                                                      viii.      Rule #8: How you do things as a company matters more today than ever.

                                                          ix.      Rule #9: When the world goes flat – and you are feeling flattened – reach for a shovel and dig inside yourself. Don’t try to build walls.

5. You and the Flat World
1. Globalization of the Local: The cultural revolution is about to begin
2. If It’s Not Happening, It’s Because You’re Not Doing It
3. What Happens When We All Have Dog’s Hearing?

    6. Geopolitics and the Flat World

1. The Unflat World: no guns or cell phones allowed

                                                              i.      Too sick

                                                            ii.      Too disempowered
                                                          iii.      Too frustrated
                                                          iv.      Too many Toyotas

2. The Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention – Old Time Versus Just In Time
3. Infosys Versus Al-Qaeda
4. Too Personally Insecure

     7. Conclusion: Imagination

1. 11/9 Versus 9/11
2. EBay
3. India
4. The Curse of Oil
5. Just One Good Example
6. From Untouchables to Untouchables

March 6, 2012