Oracle OpenWorld 2007: Tuesday Dispatch
It seems that Friedman’s “flat world” is now doctrine.
Certainly The World Is Flat is a powerful book, and a powerful idea about what is happening to our global marketplace of ideas, products, and services. But once something becomes a marketing slogan you know it has reached another level of headiness, and universal application. Folks in technology may have had a particular propensity toward those ideas because of such outsourcing pressures on our skills in recent years.
But hold on, haven’t you heard about the new trend? The world is *not* flat, or so says the Economist, after reading Pankaj Ghemawat new book Redefining Global Strategy: Crossing Borders in a World Where Differences Still Matter. I agree wholeheartedly. Granted the pressure to outsource has been felt, but if economic numbers are to be trusted, it is quite small as a percentage of the whole, and now it seems the pendulum is swinging back the other way.
Rob Preston at Information Week argued something similar, that “The new ‘Flat World’ tilts back and forth and does not stay horizontal for long!”
Still it looks cool as a slogan on a stairwell anyway… Cheers!!
