- Globalization 1.0 (1492-1800’s) “You went global through your country”. Countries began to flatten the world, going global for various reasons.
- Globalization 2.0 (1800’s-2000) Companies go global. “You went global through your company”. Companies tried to find cheaper labor, better markets, etc.
- Globalization 3.0 (Present) Individuals. “Individuals of every color of the rainbow, who will be able to plug and play”.
Lesson Two: The Flatteners
- 1. All ten flatteners converged. (2000) All of the flattening factors began to work together, complementing each other. This created a global platform for collaboration that could transcend time, distance, geography, and even language. This platform is the Flatworld, and can be used to explain any modern economic occurrences.
2. Horizontalization. The adaption of business, study, and innovative habits to a world based on connections and collaboration instead of a world based on vertical top-down institutions. Will increase the flattening of the world, as more and more processes become based upon connecting and collaborating with people around the world. Southwest Airline ticket, E-ticket, printed tickets example.
3. Three new economies. China, India, former Soviet Union. Three billon people “step onto the playing field”. Even if only ten percent are capable of participating in the new plug and play world, that’s three hundred million people, more than twice the size of the American work force as of 2005.
11/9/89. The Berlin Wall fell. Allowed the world to be viewed, “as a single flat plane”. Enabled globalization. No longer was the world divided into north, south, east, and west. Windows 3.0 shipped five months after the fall of the wall, further enabling the flattening of the world.
- 8/9/95. Netscape went public. The first commercial web browser, allowed everybody to access