Module 3: The World is Flat

While reading the last few chapters in Friedman’s book, I found quite a few things that bothered me. This even had me asking the question, “Is this book the best resource to learn these subjects?” Now I will say up to this point there was a specific focus that everything being stated was based in the past. These last few chapters have felt outdated as if Friedman decided that the development of the flat world ended in 2007 and it was a good time to stop writing. The reason that this bothered me so much is not particularly that the content is outdated but because I have a great interest in these subjects. (I’m aware that the book was written in 2007 and will have outdated information.) 

In the preface he states, “At some point I will stop writing this book. But for now, I am enjoying the chance to keep sharing what I am learning....” Apparently, he decided it was time to stop writing the book after 2007.  A lot has occurred though since 2007 to flatten the world even more. For example, smartphones, Facebook, and many other recent additions to technology that make communications in the world simpler and as Friedman says, “flatter.”

Despite my distress with the last few chapters I did learn a few things. For example, I wasn’t really sure of the differences between off-shoring and outsourcing. Off-shoring is the practice of taking a portion of your business such as a factory or call center to another country while keeping it within the same company. Outsourcing is the same concept but it takes it a little further to contract out to a third party company to do the same work. Both have their upsides and down sides. Unfortunately they both move jobs putting many people out of work but they both cause companies to be able to lower costs and provide services and products for better prices. Another benefit is that it frees up that knowledge base for those workers to move up to develop better products and needed services.

Now every company has a process that it needs to go through to produce and offer the products and services they provide. They do this through supply chains. Supply chains are the pathways from the suppliers to the retailers. Walmart is the greatest example of a company completely based on supply chains. Walmart does not make any products, they have only created the pathways from manufacturers, to the retail stores and eventually the customers. Walmart has developed a system for manufacturers to be notified that someone bought their product and that they need to produce another, send it to a Walmart distribution center, which then ships the product out to the specified store whom can sell it to start the process over. This system was developed out of necessity but has been the successful basis of Walmart’s business.

Another company that has developed a system that revolutionized business is Google. Google starting with just a search engine had to find a way to make money. This problem gave Google a challenge but they solved it and have changed the advertising industry single handedly. Due to people searching for things on Google, Google developed a strategy to make money through advertising but not in the conventional way. The standard in advertising would be to put an ad out there in the best place and hope that the audience you’re trying to reach sees it, but in Google’s case they had a little more control. Google developed a platform to personalize advertisements to the specific person that was running the searches. Therefore if someone had previously searched for cameras, Google could recognize this and show an advertisement for camera products such as film, lenses, or cameras themselves (even down to the exact cameras that person had looked at previously.) Through this model businesses could guarantee that their advertisements were being seen by the audience they were originally intended for.