Bill Daughton, chair of UMR's engineering management and systems engineering department, recently reviewed journalist Tom Friedman's popular tome on globalization, The World Is Flat, for the American Society for Engineering Management's Engineering Management Journal. He writes:
At first glance a title such as The World Is Flat sounds like a gimmick. If it weren’t for the credentials of Thomas Friedman as a New York Times columnist, it might be tempting to dismiss this work as such and not even read it. However, in retrospect, that would have been a mistake.
Friedman begins the book with a series of anecdotes which will like sound familiar to many readers to demonstrate how the global playing field is being leveled. He points to three major periods that have contributed to shrinking the world. Globalization I, extending from explorations of Columbus until around 1800, was highlighted by the dominance of countries in spreading their influence around the globe. Globalization II extended from the end of the preceding period through the year 2000. The dominating force here changed from countries to companies, which were driving their global influence. Now we are in the third period of Globalization, which is at the heart of this book. The change in this period is from companies being the dominant driver to individuals collaborating and competing globally.
This did not happen overnight but began rather quietly near the near the end of the last century. Friedman describes 10 forces that he believes have caused this third period of Globalization. Each of them is explored in detail with some interesting examples of these forces in action. The list begins with the first breach in the Berlin Wall and extends through forces connected with workflow software, various sourcing phenomena, the information explosion, and ending with a curious 10th force entitled The Steroids. In this context, “steroids" refer to new technologies that are amplifying the effects of all the other flatteners. Of particular interest is how these technologies are making the other forces mobile, virtual, and personal.
The discussion of the 10 flattening forces leads to the introduction of the concept of The Triple Convergence, which forms the basis of many the Friedmans’s following arguments. His components in this convergence are the actual convergence of the 10 flatteners to create a flatter, global playing field, the merger of this new playing field with new ways of doing business, and finally, the entry of billions of people from emerging countries into this environment. It sounds very convoluted, but as he explains it further, the convergence of these three components can be recognized in world events. The Triple Convergence is played out in the book in its effects on the United States, developing countries, and geopolitical considerations.
Of particular interest to readers involved in engineering and science education in the U.S. should be the section entitled The Quiet Crisis. The premise is that the erosion of the scientific and engineering base in the U.S. is taking us on a steady path toward losing our preeminent position as innovators of new products, services, and companies. It is “quiet" both because it is not a single, spectacular event that grabs headlines and because the erosion has not yet reached a critical point. Perhaps most disturbing is the set of examples describing what is happening in the rest of the world relative to the focus on engineering and science. My favorite quote in the book comes from this section and is one describing the focus of young people in China. Friedman says “In China today, Bill Gates is Britney Spears. In America today, Britney Spears is Britney Spears – and that is our problem." Ouch!
Friedman heads toward a conclusion with a discussion of the effects of constructive versus destructive imagination at work in the world. He uses the beginning of the end of the Berlin Wall (happening on a month and day of 11/9) and the events of 9/11 to illustrate these two competing forms of imagination. (He cleverly intertwines the 11/9 and 9/11 dates for effect.) The flattening of the world enables both these forms of imagination, and this section of the book serves as a cautionary tale.
This book brings into focus trends and events that most readers would recognize but perhaps have not thought about in the larger context of flattening the world. Thinking about how the world is changing is a healthy exercise for all of us and certainly is both invigorating and sobering. If there are any points to quibble with in this book it would be the tendency to rehash examples multiple times and the occasional lapse into political rhetoric. Many of the supporting examples are well known and somewhat over used, and seeing them multiple times was somewhat tiresome. A few sections were overly preachy in terms of political solutions, and in some ways detracted from the valuable message of the book. Despite these shortcomings, it is a worthwhile read, even though we are only a few years into Globalization III. How this really turns out, well, that is likely the subject of a future book.
In related (and, for UMR, good) news: Forbes reports on where all the good jobs will be by 2014. "The fastest growth and largest increase in sheer numbers will be in professional occupations like information technology specialists, teachers and engineers. Such jobs are forecast to grow by 6 million, or 21.2%."