Summary Of Thomas L Friedman's World Is Flat

Global market is rapidly growing these days, with strong effect of globalization has affecting all industry to expand their business in global market. Every large company wants to grow further so they go global to increase their worldwide presence. But going global is easy to say than to be done. Thomas L Friedman has made readers feel the world has become extremely global but the fact is it has been exaggerated it is still not so globalized what we feel. This is why Pankaj Ghemat criticized the author Thomas L Friedman for his book “World is Flat”.

Friedman mentions that entry to different market or access to different market has been removed by the help of technology but globalization is not about distance it also covers the Cultural, Administration,

In 1995, with 700 stores the United States, Starbucks began exploring foreign opportunities. Its first target market was Japan. Starbucks followed the strategy of Franchising in U.S. Starbucks initially decided to license its format in Japan but later on it has to Joint venture with a local retailer, Sazaby Inc. Each company held a 50% stake in the venture, Starbucks Coffee of Japan. The CAGE distance framework helps an organization for the selction of a country to enter to expand its market. The cultural, administrative, geographical, economic distance plays a important criteria for the success of business in global market. The company realized that a pure licensing agreement would not give it the control and follow the success formula of Starbucks originally since Japanese has a habit of smoking and Starbucks followed no smoking policy and to make sure the Japanese operations replicated in the “Starbucks experience” in North America, Starbucks transferred some employees to the Japanese operation. By the end of 2007 Starbucks had over 700 stores in Japan and planned to continue opening them at a brisk

It goal was to gain tighter control over the expansion strategy in Thailand. By the end of 2007 the company had 103 stores in Thailand.

Globalization is not distance between two nation its more than that, it covers various other aspects too the cultural factor of Japan made Starbucks to leave its success mantra of Franchising to Joint Venture so that it can establish its roots well in Japan.

The exaggerated information shared by Freidman on Globalization seems to have great impact on the mind of an individual, Ghemawat mentioned in the TED Talk through his recent surveys. People of France think that their country have 24% immigration rate where as the actual figure is just 8%, and an American citizens interviewed about the what percentage of their federal budget went for foreign aid the mode of the survey was 30% but the actual figure is just