The success of Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century is nothing short of astonishing. First published in 2005 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, it’s since sold more than 4 million copies and picked up numerous accolades along the way, including a Business Book of the Year award from the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs. The book (and its updated versions) has retained its relevance over the years and is still on the recommended reading list of many MBA programs.
Friedman’s globalization thesis has not gone uncontested, however, especially in academic circles. Pankaj Ghemawat, the Anselmo Rubiralta Professor of Global Strategy at IESE Business School in Barcelona, has been particularly vocal in his criticism. Starting with an acerbic Foreign Policy article in 2007, he’s carried out a veritable anti-Friedman campaign in books, articles, and speeches. In 2011, with IESE senior research associate Steven A. Altman, he released the first DHL Global Connectedness Index to measure cross-border interactions. Ghemawat appears to have developed the index as an antidote to the hallucinating effects of a condition he calls “globaloney,” meaning the exaggerated perception that the world is flat.
To read the full, original article click on this link: The Flat World Debate Revisited
