Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Making a New Year Resolution

As I was going through the Infosys website I came across one of the blogs in the site. The blog is named the "Think Flat Blog". It is based on topics and discussions on the now famed idea "The World is Flat" conceptualized by Thomas Friedman. The title of this post is exactly the title used by Mr. Nandan Nilekani, current CEO and Managing Director of Infosys Technologies Ltd. He wrote the post with the idea of looking back upon the year gone by, and writes primarily about the great promise shown by India, and why a strategic business decision is incomplete without a mention of its name. You can read the blog by Mr. Nilekani here.
I commented on the topic, which will of course be moderated, and might not be posted in the Infosys website after all. Therefore I might as well post my comments out here. The following is the exact excerpt of my comments:
How about making a "Global" New Year Resolution?

The roots of Infosys are in India and everyone admires the positive changes in the nation. But hang on, absurd as this may seem, isn't writing solely about India and its achievements defying the very word "flatness"?

The success of the western world and their consequent up rise suggested the world wasn't flat back then. For every successful nation like the U.S, there was a developing nation like India. The new age success of India, China, and others still does not suggest the world is flat. For every imagination-defying nation like India, there is still an economic and social horror ridden nation like Zimbabwe.

For all one knows, the world is far from being flat; earlier it was unipolar, and now it is multi-polar.
P.S - They did post my comment after all. What's like being on the same page with Nandan Nilekani? Not much actually - nothing in fact!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great thought !!!
I concur ... :)

Kamlesh Acharya said...

Wow Sumit.. thats a wonderful thought. Come to think of it, if 'Outsourcing' makes the world flat (as mentioned in the book 'The World is flat') there are certain preconditions to it also.. All the macroeconomic factors have to be in a country's favour for it to be outsourcing hub. But outsourcing is just a spoke in the wheel that is flattening the world. The flatteners are affecting only the countries that are at the bottom of the pyramid. The countries at the middle of the same like Brazil and Russia (of the now famous BRIC Economies) are hardly the big gainers of flattening.

But, having said that, these forces can still not be undermined. They defnly are important forces in helping bring the bottom rung nations to the 'medium' economies which would essentially reduce the divide, if not entirely flatten the world. ;-)

Thanks,
Kamlesh

Dips said...

sumit speaks :)
and sumit speaks sense!

Sameer said...

Yes, certainly the concept of flatness 'revolve' around the whole world and not just India.
Just checked Mr Nilekani's blog...your comment is right there, word-by-word!!!!

:)

cheers.

Binaya said...

The Bible tells us that god created the world in six days and on the seventh day he rested. Flattening the world took a little longer. The world has been flattened by convergence of ten major political events, innovations and companies. None of us has rested since, or maybe ever will again. The ten forces that flattened the world as per Thomas Friedman are as follows-

When the walls came down and the windows went up
When netscape went public
Work flow software
Open sourcing
Outsourcing
Offshoring
Supply-Chaining
Insourcing
In-Forming
The Steroids

We can not undermine the above forces. Definitely these forces to a large extent contribute in shaping the under-developed nations to developing nations. As a result the economic gap is gradually reducing between nations. The very true fact is " The flatness forces revolves around the world not only india". Yes sumit your comment is right.