Pankaj Ghemawat on Globaloney

I am a member of a book club which nominated Pankaj Ghemawat's book, World 3.0 as the business and Economics book of last year. For the book club, it was a profound demonstration about how misinformation and hype about globalization exceeds the reality. In the blog post here soon after that reading, I stated that popular books have pushed ahead the idea that the world has attained such a high level of globalization that borders cease to matter. Well, the people who claim this only state this because they genuinely believe it but have not placed evidence to support that claim.

The TEd talk embedded to this page is the author's explanation of the lack of evidence for the "No borders effect". It is worthy of viewing again and again as part of alerting people that both those who are opposed to globalization and its cheerleaders are wrong about the facts. This demonstrates again that for all the benefits provided by the accessibility of information, there is still a great deal of conventional wisdom that will not stand scrutiny.





  

Pankaj Ghemawat's World is Not Flat

The orthodoxy today has it that the world is integrating at a furious pace on account of growing market influences and technology is making borders completely irrelevant. I have been surprised with the fact that this is taken as a given by businesses and even some politicians. That was until I read this book by Pankaj Ghemawat  and to my consternation realized that the flat world ideas that circulate are grossly overstated and misleading.

And it is relevant that this academic is not only highly regarded and qualified to address that subject but is keenly aware of the benefits that would issue from increased globalization. It is just that he is alert to the fact that having plucked the lowest hanging fruits, everyone seems to be taking the superficial level of integration as real. As the indicators that he adopts show, the world is far less globalized than even leaders of firms that operate on a global scale are aware of. In this interview with Leslie D'Monte, he observes that "there is social pressure to believe that the world is flat", and that has prevented dispassionate examination of the subject.