Chances are good that Bhavya in Bangalore will read your next x-ray, or “Grandma Betty in her bathrobe” will make your Jet Blue plane reservation from her Salt Lake City home. People from far-flung places are becoming principal players in today’s marketplace. In this session, Friedman will draw from his most recent book, The World is Flat, offering critical insight into how today’s leaders from the public and private sectors should prepare and compete in a new “flat” world order. According to Friedman, an unplanned cascade of technological and social shifts has effectively leveled the economic world.
The list of “flatteners” includes the fall of the Berlin Wall; the rise of Netscape and the dotcom boom; the emergence of common software platforms enabling global collaboration; and the rise of outsourcing, offshoring, supply chaining and insourcing. These flatteners “created a global, web-enabled platform for multiple forms of sharing knowledge and work, irrespective of time, distance, geography and increasingly, language.” However, just when we need to face the fact of globalization and the need to compete in a new world, “we’re looking totally elsewhere.” With his inimitable ability to translate complex foreign policy and economic issues, Friedman will explain how the flattening of the world happened; what it means to countries, companies, communities, and individuals; and how leaders must adapt and plan for a truly different future.
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Thomas Friedman, a world-renowned author and journalist, joined The New York Times in 1981 and has served as a financial reporter and the chief diplomatic, chief White House, and international economics correspondents. A three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, he has traveled hundreds of thousands of miles reporting the Middle East conflict, the end of the cold war, U.S. domestic politics and foreign policy, international economics, and the worldwide impact of the terrorist threat. Friedman is the author of four best-selling and award winning books including: The World From Beirut to Jerusalem; The Lexus and the Olive Tree; Longitudes and Attitudes: Exploring the World After September 11th and; The World is Flat.