The world is flat!!

I am pretty sure many of you may have heard of this book written by Thomas L Friedman. It is book that talks about globalization to great depths, talking about the way business is done by big companies like ebay,walmart,Dell,HP,UPS,Google,Microsoft. It also studies the way many Indian based IT companies like Infosys,Wipro,Mindtree and even small firms like Jadoo works thrive in the flat world. No wonder the book is 570 pages fat excluding the appendix. The size of the book and given the fact that it is a business book may make one think it would be a dull read. But let me tell you with utmost urge that it is not. Friedman has managed to collect facts and present it in the most interesting and gripping manner.

So after couching myself on the sofa for many nights (I am a very slow reader) would I agree whether the world is really flat!! YES it is and I am sure many of my friends would second me without even having to read the book.

Let me explain you how by taking my own life as example. I was born in a small town in Karnataka, India named Chitradurga. I was bought up in Bhadravathi a small steel town in the same state. Studied in a convent school till my tenth. Then moved to the district headquarters to do my pre university in science. Then I was lucky to get a seat in the famous National institute of enginnering, Mysore. This is the same college where co-founder and chief mentor of Infosys, N R Narayanmurthy graduated. Well definitely the WORLD was not flat for me till then.

But then before I entered the final year of my graduation in IT I was recruited by Infosys. That is when I began to see the world. I was trained and later given the confidence to use my engineering skills to build and support applications for clients I had never heard of. The clients were fortune 500 companies and their profits let alone revenues was in billions of dollars.

As my experience grew I was given more responsibilites and the chance to travel to London for one such assignment. Now as many know that British ruled India for more than a century. Many Indians fought and lost lives to make the country free. They looted India of its valuable resources and used bipartisanship as a key approach to rule India. But when it went to extremes India united and fought against the british empire and got the nation free on aug 15, 1947. One thing India benefited by the ruling was the language that the britishers bought. It is the very language I use to exchange my ideas and opinions with clients around the world. Now, here I was using my technical skills doing business with people who treated us like slaves just over 50 years ago.

But in this flat world nobody is your enemy. Everyone is a potential collobarator as the book clearly states time and again. In my current assignment at Melbourne, Australia I am working in a truly multi cultural and geologically diverse team. My team comprises of myself, an Armenian, a Vietnamese and many Australians. I have been deputed/seconded from an Indian based company Infosys technologies Ltd to its subsidiary Infosys Australia. We all work together for supporting business in South Africa. The client is of a british based company. I see the world being flat day in and out. People dial in from cape town,Singapore and Melbourne on every call. We all collaborate with our different accents and sometimes make fun of each others culture at lunch. But we are all players in our own sense in this huge flat world.

The book many a times warns the Americans to wake up before the developing countries like India and China dominate them. One funny quote I would like to pick from the book. Earlier American parents told their kids to finish up the dishes as many kids starve for the same food in India. Now they urge their kids to do the homework else some Indian kid will take his/her job. Indian companies have been able to make profits and grown in huge stature by tagging along with the American companies. Now it is time to move the wheel by a notch. In fact many companies have already started doing that. We have to think ahead into the future. The flat world has given everyone the same opportunity. Notable tool being Internet. We have to make use of this and change the way things happen. We have to start making use of right imaginative brain more and in tandem with our left logical brain. As many famous thinkers have said when a company starts thinking of its memories instead of dreaming it ceases to grow. So instead of being happy and contended with what we have phenomenally achieved we should dream the next big thing and strive to make it a reality. So listen to the famous Aerosmith song “Dream On” on the American [designed in America but made in china] ipod and use your Indian brains to achieve it.