The World Is Flat

In 2004, Thomas Friedman was in Bangalore, India, visiting the headquarters of Infosys, one of the country's largest technology companies. The CEO, Nandan Nilekani, gave him a tour of the company's conference room—a space equipped with videoconferencing technology that allowed people from around the world to meet face-to-face without ever leaving their countries. As they stood there, Nilekani said something that would become the central idea of this book: "Tom, the playing field is being leveled."

That phrase stuck with Friedman. What Nilekani meant was simple but profound. With basic computer equipment and an Internet connection, a group of people can collaborate on a project from anywhere in the world. They can divide the work into parts and send those parts around the globe to be completed. The barriers of distance, time, and cost that once prevented people from competing and collaborating across borders were collapsing.

This is what Friedman means when he says the world has become flat. It's not that the planet has physically changed shape. Rather, the economic playing field has been leveled. More people than ever before can now collaborate and compete in real time with more other people on more different kinds of work from more different corners of the planet, and on a more equal footing than at any previous time in history.

To understand how we got here, Friedman divides the history of globalization into three distinct eras.

**Globalization 1.0** lasted from 1492 until 1800. This era was dominated by nation-states and brute force. Countries with the biggest armies, the strongest navies, and the most aggressive explorers shrank the world from large to medium. The driving force was how much muscle a country had—how much physical power it could project around the globe.

**Globalization 2.0** spanned from 1800 until 2000. This era was dominated by multinational corporations. The driving forces were falling transportation costs—steamships and railroads in the beginning—and falling telecommunication costs—telephones and mainframe computers toward the end. Companies expanded across borders, and the world shrank from medium to small. This was the era of global supply chains, international brands, and the rise of the global corporation.

**Globalization 3.0** began around the year 2000 and is the era we now live in. This era is fundamentally different from the previous two. It is dominated not by countries or companies, but by individuals. The driving force is the personal computer connected to the Internet. Individuals can now collaborate and compete globally. The world has shrunk from small to tiny. And unlike the previous eras, this one is truly diverse—non-Western and non-white people are involved in a much greater extent than ever before.

The shift is dramatic. In Globalization 1.0, you needed a country behind you. In Globalization 2.0, you needed a company behind you. In Globalization 3.0, you need only yourself—and a laptop with an Internet connection.

This new flat world creates both enormous opportunity and profound disruption. The same tools that allow a software developer in Bangalore to compete with a software developer in Silicon Valley also allow a small business in rural America to sell products to customers in Tokyo. The playing field is leveling, but that means everyone is now playing on the same field.

Friedman's visit to Infosys revealed this reality in concrete terms. The company's conference room was a physical manifestation of the flat world—a space where people from different continents could meet, work, and solve problems together as if they were in the same room. The technology that made this possible was not exotic or expensive. It was standard equipment: computers, fiber-optic networks, teleconferencing software. What was new was the scale and the speed at which this was happening.

Consider what this means for you. In the flat world, your competition is no longer limited to people in your city or your country. A graphic designer in Manila can bid on the same project as a graphic designer in Chicago. A customer service representative in Cairo can handle calls for a company based in London. An accountant in Mumbai can prepare tax returns for a family in New York.

But the reverse is also true. Your opportunities are no longer limited by geography. You can work for a company on the other side of the world without leaving your home. You can sell your products or services to customers anywhere. You can collaborate with partners you've never met in person.

The flat world is not a prediction. It is a description of what has already happened. The question is not whether the world has become flat, but what you are going to do about it.

So here's the question that Friedman's visit to Infosys forces us to confront: If the playing field has been leveled, are you ready to play on it?