World Is Not Flat, Academic Says

[swag]

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/business/business-books-global.html

NEW YORK (Reuters) - One of the most talked-about books of the last two years was "The World is Flat," in which author Thomas Friedman argued that borders between countries were becoming less and less important.

Now, Pankaj Ghemawat warns in "Redefining Global Strategy" (Harvard, $29.95) that businesses suffer when they follow such globalization logic too far.

The real state of the world is neither globalized nor local, Ghemawat writes. It is semiglobalized, and will remain so for decades to come.

Ghemawat, on leave from Harvard and visiting professor of global strategy at IESE Business School in Barcelona, found that the average level of globalization in investments, phone calls, tourism and immigration is just 10 percent.

And some measures, like the international share of total Internet traffic, are actually decreasing. "This calls into question the other common myth that even if the world isn't quite flat today, it will be tomorrow," he said.


. . .

[provis99]

1. Tom Friedman is a Schmuck

I like that title better.

[RaleighNCDUer]

2. This should be obvious to anyone outside the ivory towers.

Just look at German in the wake of reunification. Common people, common language, common history except for 40 post-war years, common currency, yet the economic differences were, and still are, profound between the western states and the former East Germany.

And people think that a couple trade agreements are going to create a flattening of differences between, say, the US and Mexico?

[pop goes the weasel]

3. and yet it took someone inside the ivory tower

to point it out.

Maybe people ought to take better notes in college.

[depakid]

4. "...will remain so for decades to come."

Pankaj Ghemawat just lost his credibility.

Globalization will quickly become a thing of the past over the next decade, as it's inextricably tied to cheap petroleum.