April 5, 2005
flat world
Great Article by The New York Times. “It’s A Flat World After All”:
It all happened while we were sleeping, or rather while we were focused on 9/11, the dot-com bust and Enron — which even prompted some to wonder whether globalization was over. Actually, just the opposite was true, which is why it’s time to wake up and prepare ourselves for this flat world, because others already are, and there is no time to waste.
As over 90% of my business and readership is abroad… Rock on.
[NOTE TO SELF:] Possible book idea/book title: “How To Create A Global Microbrand In Six Weeks On A Taco-Stand Budget”.
[UPDATE:] Some more discussion on the subject over at Metafiter. Thanks to Peter for the link.
You might find some of these comments interesting.
http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/40939
I read both the original article, and the comments in Metafilter, I’ve also got the book yet to read, but it’s sitting here in it’s Barnes & Noble bag.
My two rupees worth — There is a message that Friedman’s trying to get out to the larger American public that is drowning in the meticulously researched rebuttals and critiques, which while very very impressive and intelligent, are missing the point. When an entity is complacent in it’s percieved leadership, inaccurate details aside, there is a sledgehammer required to wake it up and make it smell the coffee.
Flame away…
Hugh
I’m working on creating a global microbrand. I saw what you were doing last year, and decided I’d had enough of working for wannabe start-ups. I’ll write some software and market it myself. You had the marketing plan all spelled out in How To Be Creative and The Hughtrain, all I had to do was create a product.
My experience with blogging last year made it pretty clear that rubbing elbows regionally was futile. I made better contacts, abroad, via blogging. Obviously, it was better to stay focused on a discipline (XSLT), and have Google direct the interested parties to my work.
I’ve got a number ideas that I hope will catch, outsourcing management, for one, making friends offshore, the death of venture capitol, programming in the small… On top of that, I’ve written the code that makes it not all talk. Now I’m getting ready to have a conversation, with as many people as possible, about software as art. Your book would be well timed.
I’ve read your blog, applied it to my career, and yes, that’s the title, because a Microbrand is my goal, a Taco-Stand would break my budget, and I gave myself six months, not six weeks, but hey, if you could make it go faster…
What about doing like what Evelyn is doing, and leading an Internet wide retreat, “advance”, setting a six-week time frame, setting guidelines, and then challenging us to apply the Hughtrain? We could all track our progress on our blogs, link to one another, share insights, and in the end you’ll have case studies for your book.
After this The Hughtrain would be the real deal.
It’s a Flat Flat Flat Flat World
The idea that globalization has accelerated and no one is paying any attention is something I’ve been noticing for a while now. Here’s a great article explaining the point better than I can: It’s a Flat World, After All. It’s a great explanation of h…
Sorry — made comments regarding another section — and your link was regarding Flat World article. That reminded me of a story on TomPeters.com. My bad.
I also enjoyed the article Flat World. Please visit: http://tavo.blogs.com/my_weblog/2005/04/turning_japanes.html#more