Module 3

                                                                    Module 3

In this section of the book the Author keeps informing us about the ten forces that flattened the world as he sees it. He talks about offshoring ,outsourcing, supply chains and Google.

offshoring is shipping the entire business to another country to produce the product or service at a less-expensive price while Outsourcing takes a part of a company, like their call center and contracts a different company to do the same work for less money. While reading the book I realized that offshoring is not as bad as most people want to make it look because of people losing their jobs, the Author helped me understand that even when the company moved the entire business to another country a variety of studies indicate that for every dollar they invested in an offshore factory this makes additional exports for its home country. The offshoring works both ways and America also benefits of the offshore investment coming in every year from those that want access to American markets. Also I think that a lot of those companies that have moved their factories overseas might not be in business anymore without doing that and for most cases I've heard of the company usually leaves some jobs in the united states.

We can call supply chain at the process of moving a product from the supplier to the consumer. A big example of good supply chain is Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart Inc. has become the biggest and most profitable retailer on the market. They realized they could save money and offer better prices if they got their good directly from manufactures, they have cutting edge technology to their advantage , they learn from their customers and what products consumers are buying the most, then they send that information to the supply chain to get them replaced right away.

Google is everywhere, its available all over the world and in different languages, at this point you don’t even need to know how to type to use it, your voice is enough. What made Google the leader in search engines was the technology they used to show the most relevant pages to the specific keyword that was entered in the search bar. Google knows exactly what you are looking for and with this comes the way they affected business. They offered business the opportunity to advertise online, for a price of course, but depending on your search or keyword you now get ads for any business that offer what you are looking for. You can get an advertise for a local business or for someone who has the product you need in another part of the country or world. That has helped both, consumers and business. I'm one of those who wont buy an item without looking at the reviews, options or prices on Google first, and to be honest if I don’t know something I turn to Google.  This search engine has helped every type of business, from small to large company to have growing opportunities and those who are not at par with technology will not be able to compete with the ones who already are.

Module 2

Module 2

In this section of the book the author talks about more 3 more flatteners  He talks about workflow software, open source software and outsourcing.

Workflow Software is described by Friedman as a software that can be used in companies to make everything work together. He explains the software revolution developed after people who were connecting wanted to do more with the internet than just browsing or sending emails.  This gave companies the ability to communicate between departments. Before the workflow  companies had different systems on each department, depending on their needs, that didn't mean that they were not successful just that work didn't flow digitally because maybe in a company someone from the sales department still had to go to the warehouse to verify if the item needed was on inventory. We needed something that would ensure that everyone's emails and software could connect with everyone else's email and software.

A good example is the company I used to work for. It was a medical insurance company. I had to make sure that our customers were cold find a doctor with our product and all their claims were covered. I did not worked in the claims department or a doctors office but using their software system and without having to move from my office I was able to verify the claims that someone else had worked on another department, check their notes from the doctors office and a lot more. Communicating with other offices within the same company that were not even in the same building that I was at the moment.

Open source Software is also knows as community developed software and this one is created by programmers and given away for free download.  The programmers also let anyone that has something to improve this software to collaborate. The free software movement is a bigger deal that what some people think, right now almost every kind of software can be found with a free alternative. An example that I know and is also mentioned in the book is Open office, It has the basic features of Microsoft office but you don’t have to pay from $99 to $200 to use it. Most of the companies that offer paid software are very expensive and It is nice to have another option, I think that is a fact that makes open source so important in our lives.

The author also talks a little about uploading and with this comes Blogging , podcasting , YouTube and Wikipedia. All of this ones just illustrates how popular uploading has become. All this sites have allowed the users to share, view, contribute and also learn from others.

The last flattener on this module is outsourcing. The author explains how United states benefited from India, any service, business, call center or business operation that could be done over the internet could be outsourced to the cheapest provider. Outsourcing from America to India as a new form of collaboration exploded. He explains that Indian companies were good and cheap. The Y2K gave India a bigger chance to collaborate with western companies, to upgrade their  computers the companies had to find who will do the job for as little money as possible, and the Indians companies did just that. That makes outsourcing important, the effectiveness and cost. After that Indian companies started to develop their own products and transform themselves from maintenance to product  companies. 

Module 1

Module 1 

  

In the first part of The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman he discusses globalization and explain how the world has flatten by explaining that American companies are outsourcing their jobs with European, Asian and also Indian Countries to save money.

Globalization 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 describes the different eras of how people and countries interact with each other. Globalization 1 .0 began around 1492 up to the year 1800 and the global interaction during that time was between governments and nations. Globalization 2.0 began around 1800 up to 2000 and global interaction was happening more and more in companies and large corporations. The majority of these were initiated by western based companies. Around the year 2000 as he explains came globalization 3.0, our era, when is not about the country or the companies but about the individual, we now have the ability to share information, work or talk from different computers all over the world. Friedman says, allows “individuals to collaborate and compete globally” in what he calls a flat world platform.

Friedman talks about 10 events that helped flatten the word, right now I will talk about two of them. One of them was the fall of the wall of Berlin  Friedman explains how this was a critical event and it opened up new ways of communication for everyone. Friedman explains that the wall was not only blocking our way but it was blocking our sight .With the fall of the wall of Berlin communism came to an end and the countries under that system were free to pursue other markets.

Another event is Netscape. They created the first web browser that was accessible to anyone with a computer from small to large business to small children Friedman mentions “once the browser brought the internet alive and made web pages sing and dance and display, everyone wanted everything digitalized as much as possible”. They made it very simple for people to use and also offered free trials of their software. He also mentioned the fiber optic cables as that are vital for the internet to function. The rise of the internet usage has helped flatten the world. 

Technology grows every day, and because of this the world will keep getting flatter. For example I come from a small island called Dominican Republic, even when walking through a poor neighborhood you can see people with phones that have internet or with computers, sharing and communicating with others.  People from anywhere in the world can communicate with other anytime. As I finish reading the pages for this assignment I can understand why Friedman states that the world is flat.