“The idea of my book The World is Flat came about by mere accident,” said Thomas Friedman, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, noted New York Times columnist and author of four bestselling books. At the inaugural Penguin annual lecture here on Tuesday, Friedman spelt out his vision of today’s levelled world.

“During a trip to Bangalore, Infosys Co-Chairman Nandan Nilekani told me that the global economic playing field was being levelled and we Americans were not ready for it. That is when I thought that what he meant by the levelling of the global field was that the world is in fact become flat,” recalled Friedman.

Earlier, Nilekani introduced Friedman by defining him an “intellectual entrepreneur”. “Friedman has made a significant contribution in promoting India’s image globally, probably more than the whole diplomatic service,” he said, adding that Friedman is an authority on diverse issues ranging from West Asia to globalisation, energy and environment.

According to Friedman, the phase of a flattened world began in 2000, ushering in an era where economic development was built not around countries and companies, but around individuals. Three key technologies, he said, were the genesis of the flat world — the advent of personal computers, which enabled individuals to author their own digital content; Netscape going public on September 8, 1995, triggering the dotcom boom, which allowed individuals to send their content to others across the world; and the software or workflow revolution, which made every computer and software inter-operable.

“Today, we are living through a transformation from vertical value addition to horizontal value addition. This new platform has created new rules of doing business,” he said. “First, the need to ‘horizontalise’ ourselves. Second, we must remember that what can be done will be done — the only question is whether it will be done by you or it is done to you. Third, the most important economic competition today is not between countries or companies but between an individual and his imagination.”

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