The World Is Flat

Assignment – “The World is Flat”

Submitted By – Ashish Goel (Reims Management School / Neoma Business School)

In the assignment, we had to identify five key issues that impacted global/international marketing that was done back in 2005 according to Friedman. Also, we had to comment on whether we agreed or disagreed with the insights given by Friedman as applicable to today’s world and in the near future. I would like to start-off by giving a brief description of 5 key issues which according to me were the most significant ones as pointed out by Friedman. Then, I would be discussing each issue separately to see if it is still in play and if it is really contributing to the flattening of world even today. 5 key issues – 1. 1995 launch of internet - The first Netscape web browser was released in December 1994. It made the Web user-friendly and suddenly everybody was getting online. In addition, Netscape was available for every major operating system: Microsoft Windows, Apple, and UNIX. This was a big step in business computing as before this computers in a business’ one division were not able to communicate with other divisions. With later standardization, it became very easy to share data and information over large platforms. E.g., any sales data can be immediately forwarded to accounting department who can process it immediately and send it further to the shipping department. On 8/9/95, Netscape went public which fueled an enormous rise in stock prices of technology companies. Although the dot-com bubble burst in 2000 but till then it had helped in the laying of miles and miles of fiber optic cable, which could carry billions of times more information than the previous copper wire medium. This led to internet becoming inexpensive. 2. Uploading/open-sourcing - Uploading is the process of transmitting information from your computer to a network. Friedman considered this to be the most disturbing force of all. According to him, now users could not only use...