The World Is Flat/Friedman 351-355

Rule #4 The best companies are the best collaborators. In the flat world, more and more business will be done through collaboration within and between companies, for a very simple reasons: The next layers of value creation---are becoming so complex that no single firm or department is going to be able to master them alone.

353 Therefore, to come up with any valuable new breakthrough, you have to be able to combine more and more of these increasingly granular specialties.

355 we own the ability to identify and define what product is required by our customers, we own the ability to integrate the latest science into making these products, we own the route to the market for these products, and we own the ability to collect and understand the data generated by those customers using our products, enabling us to support that product while in service and constantly add value.

355 One of the core competencies of the business today is partnering. We partner on products and on service provisions, we partner with universities and with other participants in our industry.

The World Is Flat/Friedman 349-351

Rule #3 And the big shall act small…One way that big companies learn to flourish in the flat world is by learning how to act really small by enabling their customers to act really big.

350 These companies create a platform that allows individual customers to serve themselves in their own way, at their own pace, in their own time, according to their own tasts.

351 Self-Directed consumer—can act very small by enabling their customers to act very big.

Rule #4 The best companies are the best collaborators. In the flat world, more and more business will be done through collaboration within and between companies, for a very simple reasons: The next layers of value creation---are becoming so complex that no single firm or department is going to be able to master them alone.

The World Is Flat/Friedman 345-349

Rule #2 And the small shall act big…One way small companies flourish in the flat world is by learning to act really big. And the key to being small and acting big is being quick to take advantage of all the new tools for collaboration to reach farther, faster, wider, and deeper.

348 It was just a question of having the energy and imagination to adopt the tools and put them to good use.

348 The Web enabled me to act big and replicate a massive technology that the big guys have invested millions in, at a fraction of the cost.

349 There are no more than two to three layers between me and anyone in the company.

The World Is Flat/Friedman 339-345

HOW COMPANIES COPE

Rule #1 When the world goes flat—and your feeling flattened reach for a shovel and dig inside yourself. Don’t try to build walls.

344 Commoditization. As more and more analog processes become digital, virtual, mobile, and personal, more and more jobs and functions are being standardized, digitized, and made both easy to manipulate and available to more players.

344 hire more thinkers and outsource more technology

344 Vanilla just won’t put food on the table anymore.

345 It’s all about imagination

The World Is Flat/Friedman p.325-339

327 Culture of tolerance…tolerance breeds trust, and trust is the foundation of innovation and entrepreneurship. Increase the level of trust in any group, company, or society, and only good things happen.

330 Intangible things. A society’s ability and willingness to pull together and sacrifice for the sake of economic development and the presence in society of leaders with the vision to see what needs to be done in terms of development and the willingness to use power to push for change

335 countries should focus on creating jobs that add higher value. Only if more productive companies with higher-value added activities replace less productive ones can middle income economies continue down the development path.

336 Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.
339 Everyone wants economic growth, but nobody wants to change

The World Is Flat/Friedman p321-325

322 Yesterday competition was next door…today’s competition is worldwide.

323 The jobs are going to go where the best-educated workforce is with the most competitive infrastructure and environment for creativity and supportive government. It is inevitable.

325 The more you have a culture that naturally globalizes – that is, the more your culture easily absorbs foreign ideas and best practices and melds those with its own traditions—the greater advantage you will have in a flat world.

325 Openness is critical.

325 in this talent-based and performance-based world rather than the background-based world.

The World Is Flat/Friedman 317-321

318 They grow out of poverty when they also create an environment below that makes it very easy for their people to start businesses, raise capital, and become entrepreneurs, and when they subject their people to at least some competition from beyond—because companies and countries with competitors always innovate more and faster.

318 If you change the regulatory and business environment for the poor, and give them the tools to collaborate , they will do the rest.

321 Five-step checklist for reform retail.
1)Simply and deregulate whenever possible in competitive markets (overregulation just opens the door for corrupt bureaucrats to demand bribes)
2) Focus on enhancing property rights
3) expand Internet regulation fulfillment.
4) reduce court involvement in business matters.
5) make reform a continuing process.

The World Is Flat/Friedman 284-317

285 it becomes increasingly important for society, to the extent possible, to make benefits and education the two key ingredients for employability as flexible as possible.

302 Instead we should be thinking about how collaboration between consumers and companies can provide an enormous amount of protection against the worst features of the flattening of the world, without out opting for classic protectionism.
303 Put simply, we a new generation of parents ready to administer tough love. There come a time when you’ve got to put away the Game Boys, turn off the television set, put away the iPod, and get your kids down to work.

304 Ambition comes from the parents

306 this is not a test…A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.

317 The real issue is not just employment, but increasingly productive employment that allows living standards to rise.

The World Is Flat/Friedman 265-284

265 Dirty Little Secret #3 The Education Gap

280 Think about Microsoft trying to figure out how to deal with global army of people writing software for free! We are entering an era of creative destruction on steroids.

282 Transforming of an enterprise begins with a sense of crisis of urgency. No institution will go through fundamental change unless it believes it is in deep trouble and needs to do something different to survive.

283 The job of government and business is not to guarantee anyone a lifetime job—those days are over. What government can and must guarantee people is the chance to make themselves more employable.

284 Lifetime employability requires replacing the fat with muscle.

284 The muscles workers need most are portable benefits and opportunities for lifelong learning

The World Is Flat/Friedman 238-265

239 This is why if you cannot be special or specialized, you don’t want to count on being anchored so you won’t be outsourced. You actually want to be come really adaptable. You want constantly to be able to create value---something more that vanilla ice cream.

239 Learn how to learn.

239 You have to be skillfully adaptable and socially adaptable.

244 MIT: The Impact of Innovations

256 Dirty Little Secret #1 The Number Gap— Decline in U.S. citizens who are training to become scientist and engineers, whereas the number of jobs requiring science and engineering training continues to grow.

260 Dirty Little Secret #2 The Ambition Gap
Whatever you put in your head and your stomach no one can take away from you.

264 The secret isn’t just lower wages. It’s also the attitude of workers who take pride and are willing to do what is necessary to succeed

265 You need to understand things in order invest beyond them

The World Is Flat/Friedman p. 212-238

213 hierachies are not being leveled just by little people being about to act big. They are being leveled by big people being able to act really small-in the sense that they are enabled to do many more things on their own.

230 So idea-based workers do well in globalization, and fortunately America as a whole has more idea-driven workers than any country in the world.

230 There may be a limit to the number of good factory jobs in the world, but there is no limit to the number of idea-generated jobs in the world.

231 The pie keeps growing because things that look like wants today are needs tomorrow.

237 You have to constantly upgrade your skills. There will be plenty of good jobs out there in the flat world for people with the knowledge and ideas to seize them.

237 Finish you homework—people in China and India are starving for your jobs
238 Untouchables---are people whose cannot be outsources

The World Is Flat/Friedman p.191-212

200 The world has been flattened. As a result of the triple convergence, global collaboration and competition – between individuals and individuals, companies and individuals, companies and companies, and companies and customers-have been make cheaper, easier, more friction-free, and more productive for more people from more corners of the earth that at any time in the history of the world.

200 I mean an era in which technology will literally transform every aspect of business, every aspect of life and every aspect of society.

201 Because when the world start to move from a primarily vertical (command and control) value-creation model to an increasingly horizontal (connect & collaborate) creation model, it doesn’t affect just how business gets done. It affects everything

205 one person’s economic liberation could be another’s unemployment.

211 We have grown addicted to our high salaries, and now we are really going to have to earn them…CEO
212 From command and control to collaborate and connect

The World Is Flat/Friedman p.184-191

190 be better off thinking about how you can raise your bar and raise yourselves into doing something better. Americans have consistently led in innovation over the last century. Americans whining --- we have never seen that before.

191 everyone is going to have to improve themselves and be able to compete.

191 It’s about how you can create a great opportunity for yourself and hold on to that or keep creating new opportunities where you can thrive. I think today that rule is about efficiency, it’s about collaboration and it is about competitiveness and is it is about being a player. It is about staying sharp and being in the game…The world is a football field now and you’ve got to be sharp to be on the team which plays on that field. If you’re not good enough, you’re going to be sitting and watching the game.

The World Is Flat/Friedman p.177-184

178 In short, the convergence of the ten flatteners begat the convergence of a set of business practices and skills that would get the most out of the flat world. And then the two began to mutually reinforce each other.

179 How you collaborate horizontally and manage horizontally requires a totally different set of skills from traditional top-down approaches.

180 Figure out the value proposition that is needed for each client and then identify and assemble the individual talent.

181 CONVERGENCE III – It is this triple convergence – of new players, on a new playing field, developing new processes and habits for horizontal collaboration

183 The winners will be those who learn the habits, processes, and skills most quickly—and there is simply nothing that guarantees

183 Many Chinese just skipped over the landline phase

184 The Zippies are Here…Indian zippies fell no guilt about making money or spending it.

The World Is Flat/Friedman Notes: 175-177

175 A new, flatter, global playing field. As this new playing field become established, both businesses and individuals began to adopt new habits, skills, and processes to get the most out of it.

THE TRIPLE CONVERGENCE

CONVERGENCE I—Work Flow software & hardware & web…makes it possible for parties to collaborate in real time regardless of geography, distance or even language

176 The net result of this convergence was the creation of a global, Web-enabled playing field that allows for multiple forms of collaboration-the sharing of knowledge and work-in real time, without regard to geography, distance, or, in the near future, even language. No, not everyone has access yet to this platform, this playing field , but it is open today to more people in more places on more days in more ways than anything like it ever before in the in history of the world.

177 CONVERGENCE II— Introducing new technology alone is never enough. The big spurts in productivity come when a new technology is combined with new ways of doing business.

The World Is Flat/Friedman Notes Pages 129-175

137 If Wal-Mart were an individual economy, it would rank as China’ eighth biggest trading partner, ahead of Russia, Australia, and Canada.

143 Insourcing—a whole new form of collaboration and creating value horizontally, made possible by the flat world and flattening it even more.

144 Synchronized commerce solutions

152 Never before in the history of the planet have so many people – on their own—had the ability to find so much information about so many things and about so many other people.

153 In-forming is the individual’s personal analog to open-sourcing, outsourcing, insourcing, supply-chaining, and offshoring. In-forming is the ability to build and deploy your own personal supply chain—a supply chain of information, knowledge and entertainment.

155 Google to become first among search engines was its ability to combine its PageRank technology with an analysis of page content, which determines which pages are most relevant to the specific search being conducted.

157 What made Google not just a search engine but a hugely profitable business was its founders’ realization that they could build a targeted advertising model that would show you ads that are relevant to you when you searched for a specific topic and then could change advertiser for the number of times Google users clicked on their ads.

157 The Internet is growing in the self-services area, and Yahoo! Groups exemplifies this trend.