Is The World Really Flat? — HBS Working Knowledge

Is The World Really Flat? — HBS Working Knowledge

Harvard Business School
Working Knowledge


Is The World Really Flat?
Published: January 7, 2009
Author: Jim Heskett

Highlights:

That's the question posed by Amar Bhidé in his new book, The Venturesome Economy. Disputing Thomas Friedman, author of The World is Flat, Bhidé concludes that: (1) it isn't, and (2) arguments by Friedman and others—whom he labels as "techno-nationalists"—fail to recognize how innovation that matters really occurs and aren't always helpful to long-term global or even U.S. development.>

His conclusions are, among others, that: (1) it doesn't matter where in the world high-level research takes place, because (2) its findings travel easily and at relatively low cost, but that (3) as one progresses from high-level to ground-level products and services and from high-level to ground-level know-how, ideas travel less easily. The work associated with them is more localized and less exportable. Thus, concerns about "brain drains," the proportion of foreign students studying in U.S. institutions of higher learning, or the likelihood that the U.S. will continue to lose its dominance in the development of new high-level ideas and know-how are overblown. >

Instead, Bhidé concludes that the edge in economic development from the "innovation game" comes from the kind of entrepreneurial behavior that adapts and combines high-level ideas and know-how, adjusts them to the needs of particular markets, and actually sells them to willing buyers. Without these capabilities, high-level ideas, as was the case with the development of transistors, can take decades to develop. >

Read Full artice: http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6090.html

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This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.