The World is Not Flat

In year 2005 and 2006, the book titled "The World is Flat" written by veteran journalist Milton Friedman was sold like hot cake in Vietnam. People rushed in like swarm of bees to book shops finding the book, and later was mass of recommendations and conferences on it for years. Author Milton Friedman writes a lot about mixed trends in modern world in which business/trade is the easiest to remark. This is not suprising as his book has been among the best sellers since the publication of The Lexus and the Olive tree before.

So, what goes beyond that fever? What's on earth more boring than sitting down and appraising just one personal viewpoint. Where's the critical thinking, where're sophisticated differences, where are you diverse brains? Nevertheless, the only thing we can see is the 'consensus' feedback--big clap. This drives us to the question "Is the World really flat?" After objective and thorough studies, we come up with the conclusion that "The world is forever spiky." Even if author Friedman renamed the book "This World is absolutely flat," my conclusion remains unchanged. Author gave in the book a lot of argument, image, and evidence in order to flatten this rough world of different cultures and understandings. We bet that the term "Flat" by Friedman is not like what most Vietnamese readers think. The reason is we are talking about one thing but standing on different philosophy, values, belief, and diverse language-behaviours. Let's check out prooves.

Professor Nancy Napier- Author of hundreds of article and researches, Ph.D at Boise State University, we mentioned above in this book, often borrows Friedman's words and develops her own ideas. Doctor Napier is a competent researcher with the best characteristics of a true scientist never says "The world is forever spiky" but her scientific work has proved the thing. In a trip to Boise city in April 2007, she gave me her two publications about research on creativity and one about knowledge transition in Vietnam (Napier, 2005:[30] and Napier, 2006:[31]). Those didn't encourage me to agree with Friedman, but helped me more insisted on my initial point. At material [32], page 220, we find scholar Richard Florida straightly opposed to the conclusion "Flat" by Friedman. Author Florida has provided readers with many researches and evidences that this World is infinitely Spiky.

This priky world is never absolutely smoothed out despite super modern technologies, let alone the use of just global information and investment orginated from different culture systems which have long penetrated into people's blood in different societies. Borrowing Forida's words, Prof. Napier stated that in terms of creativity and economic power, there are a limited numer of countries overwhelming the rest and rise up to be the summit in global system; the root of difference is huge. Evidences and trends prove that the summit is becoming higher and the sunken regions are little moving or even ebbing.

Another Brazilian author, Thomaz Wood also supports Florida. He developed more ideas regarding business management. According to Wood, leaders and CEOs in giant economies are on top, therefore they are about to approach newest technology, diverse capital sources; as a result, creative thinking is permanent... whereas at the same position, those in sunken world hardly reach out to what have just been said above.

We are not feeling that roughness intuitionally? Just because we are not looking into the problem, or not admitting it. In the context of Vietnam's business culture in 2007, we don't watch out to that difference, instead we accept it passively. In other cases, efforts to flatten the surface has quickly evaporated. To understand the problem, trace the next chapter: Culture.