Module 5

Jacob Ready

Module 5

IST 1100

2/5/2012

Module 5

            After reading the pages in the book I am learning so much form this book and am realizing that the world is much bigger and defiantly “flatter” than I thought it was.  One of the important things that Freidman talked about was the Triple convergence which was in addition to the ten flatteners that were three additional components that acted on the flatteners to create a new flatter global playing field. The first up until the year 2000, the ten flatteners were semi-independent from one another.  An example of independence is the inability of one machine to perform multiple functions. When work-flow software and hardware converged, multiple functions such as e-mail, fax, printing, copying and communicating were able to be done from one machine. Around the year 2000, all the flatteners converged with one another. This convergence could be compared to complementary goods, in that each flattener enhanced the other flatteners; the more one flattener developed, the more leveled the global playing field became.

The second was after the emergence of the ten flatteners a new business model was required to succeed. While the flatteners alone were significant, they would not enhance productivity without people being able to use them together. Instead of collaborating vertically, business needed to begin collaborating horizontally.

            The third was after the Berlin wall fell countries that had followed the Soviet economic model including India, China, Russia, and the nations of Eastern Europe, Latin America and Central Asia- began to open up their economies to the world.  When this happened it added new brain power and the whole playing field enhanced horizontally across the globe.

                        One of the most disturbing things that I read in this book was the fact that an Indian company won a contract for the chance to upgrade the unemployment department of Indiana and were going to have employees move from India to here to work when they said that they were going to hire locally.  I thought that is was ridiculous that we would hire a Indian firm instead because they could make a higher bid on the contract because the Indiana firm was too small of a company to big 16 million dollars.

            The last and final part of what I felt was important about what Freidman had said was about intellectual property.  I had never heard of intellectual property is any innovation that a company has come up with and it is a very big issue because it gives companies the right to say that they own certain products and that other companies can’t steal it and use it for their uses without some sort of repayment. The reason this is so important is because businesses from overseas are using the same things that we have created to make more of the items in a cheaper way and it is becoming a problem for companies within the United States.