Why (Not) Read “The World is Flat?”

In his book, The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman very enthusiastically sets forth his analysis of the globalization trend of the past decade, its present and projected effect on our lives, and how best to adapt to it. Right now I am going to tell you what I didn’t like about it. I do this in spite of the fact that the book is a valuable read with plenty of praise-worthy, thought-provoking content to satisfy the intellectual cravings of any modern thinker. For instance, anyone could tell you that computers and the Internet transformed society in unimaginable ways, but few of them describe in such thorough, specific, and accurate detail just how people used these technologies to bring to pass the world’s flattening. With that said, here is what I don’t like about the book.

Where’s the Hard Evidence?

While Friedman introduces to the reader’s mind a host of new ideas and propositions about globalization, very often I found myself asking him mentally to “prove it,” because there is almost no quantitative evidence to support most of his points. This desire manifested itself strongest in a chapter Friedman dedicated to convincing his readers of the value of an open market. By the end of the chapter, however, he proved most effective in convincing me that economics is a branch of philosophy instead of a science. Can anyone imagine any organization, private or institutional, making a far-reaching decision, one that everyone agrees will have a profound impact on the organization’s future, based solely on someone’s opinion on the subject? The choice to maintain or constrain an open market in the U.S. is one such decision, one that demands at least some supporting quantitative information.

To Adapt to Globalization, Be Better…. At Everything!

Friedman spends a significant number of words informing the reader what individuals, companies, and educational systems must do to adapt to the modern world. To summarize, we need to train our students more extensively in math and sciences, and we also need to round them out with an improved liberal arts education. Our companies need to outsource commoditized services and at the same time insource their own services to other companies. Big companies need to act small, and small companies need to act big. People need to be more creative, passionate, and curious, and learn how to love to learn. They need to improve their right brains, and also need to improve their left brains. In short, everyone needs to be better at everything!
At first I was caught by a feeling of raw enthusiasm infused in Friedman’s calls for national self-improvement in response to an increasingly competitive world. Unfortunately, after a while I began to view his general, all-encompassing, and often times repetitive assertions as an overly long motivational speech. While I sincerely enjoyed the book’s energy and positive thinking about our current era, I would not shed a tear if much of the above material were simply sliced from the book.

Conclusions

To end on a positive note, anyone who wants to understand how the world has changed in the last decade with respect to business processes will stand to gain much from reading The World is Flat. There are simply a few imperfections of the book, and hopefully pointing them out will help others to observe the book’s content in a different light