In a new book, The Venturesome Economy Amar Bhidé challenges The World is Flat notion proposed by Thomas Friedman in his book of that name. Bhidé concludes that:
a.) the world is not flat and
b.) that the people he calls the “techno-nationalists”— have got it wrong.
(At the very least we could agree that the world is spiky)
Read more. This short piece ends with some provocative questions about the kind of innovation that matters and how to promote it.
Bhidé concludes that the competitive innovation edge comes from the kind of entrepreneurial behavior that “adapts and combines high-level ideas and know-how, adjusts them to the needs of particular markets, and actually sells them to willing buyers.”
To read more:
Amar Bhidé, The Venturesome Economy: How Innovation Sustains Prosperity in a More Connected World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008).
Thomas L. Friedman, The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006)
Now – if the idea was that of a flat earth…well surely, that is a matter of common sense.
Two other books to read, which offer a counterperspective to Friedman’s “The World is Flat.”
The Harvard Professor, Pankaj Ghemawat’s latest book, “Redefining Global Strategy,” is more academically inclined. I read an article of his published in the journal, “Foreign Policy”, where he argues that the world is, at best, only semi-globalized. His argument being that Cultural, Administrative, Geographic and Economic aspects of a nation come in the way of total globalization from taking place and cites examples of the same.
The other small, but interesting book, is by Aronica and Ramdoo, “The World is Flat? A Critical Analysis of Thomas Friedman’s New York Times Bestseller.”
Interestingly enough, the book written about two years back, discusses in the following chapters,
“Debt and Financialization of America”
“America”s Former Middle Class”
“A Paradigm Shift for America” with prescriptions for the future
the debt ridden American society, deregulated financial institutions, mortgage crisis and other related issues, with clear pointers to the economic crisis gripping US today. For more information regarding the same, check this out: mkpress.com/FlatExcerpts.pdf
It is a small book compared to the 600 page tome by Friedman, and aimed at the common man and students alike. The authors point to the fact that there isn’t a single table or data footnote in Friedman’s entire book. “Globalization is the greatest reorganization of the world since the Industrial Revolution,” says Aronica.
You may want to see http://www.mkpress.com/flat
and watch http://www.mkpress.com/flatoverview.html
for an interesting counterperspective on Friedman’s
“The World is Flat”.
Also a really interesting 6 min wake-up call: Shift Happens! http://www.mkpress.com/ShiftExtreme.html
There is also a companion book listed: Extreme Competition: Innovation and the Great 21st Century Business Reformation
http://www.mkpress.com/extreme
http://www.mkpress.com/Extreme11minWMV.html