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come right to the main point of this review: Thomas Friedman's brilliant catch phase, book title and powerfully developed new thesis — "The World is Flat" — is yet another reaffirmation of what Bahá'u'lláh said about 150 years ago when He declared that “The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens.” That's not to say there is nothing new in Mr. Friedman's latest book. The World Is Flat is a wide-ranging examination of how trends and technologies like freedom, the Internet, and open-source software are converging to make it possible for educated people everywhere to compete with the best and the brightest in North America and Europe . And that is changing everything, for people everywhere, much more quickly than had been previously imagined. Mr. Friedman, a Pulitzer prize-winning columnist for the New York Times , says the convergence of these trends and technologies is “flattening” the world. They create a “level playing field” where companies and individuals now successfully compete in the global market regardless of location. Mr. Friedman is by now an acknowledged expert on globalization, having outlined its impact in his 1999 book The Lexus and the Olive Tree . There he argued that globalization had become “the dominant international system at the end of the twentieth century — replacing the Cold War system…”

Cost savings — The lowering of the overall cost of the service to the business. This will involve reducing the scope, defining quality levels, re-pricing, re-negotiation, and cost re-structuring. Access to lower cost economies through offshoring called "labor arbitrage" generated by the wage gap between industrialized and developing nations.[10] Focus on Core Business — Resources (for example investment, people, infrastructure) are focused on developing the core business. For example often organizations outsource their IT support to specialised IT services companies. Cost restructuring — Operating leverage is a measure that compares fixed costs to variable costs. Outsourcing changes the balance of this ratio by offering a move from fixed to variable cost and also by making variable costs more predictable. Improve quality — Achieve a steep change in quality through contracting out the service with a new service level agreement. Knowledge — Access to intellectual property and wider experience and knowledge.[11] Contract — Services will be provided to a legally binding contract with financial penalties and legal redress. This is not the case with internal services.[12] Operational expertise — Access to operational best practice that would be too difficult or time consuming to develop in-house. Access to talent — Access to a larger talent pool and a sustainable source of skills, in particular in science and engineering.[13][14] Capacity management — An improved method of capacity management of services and technology where the risk in providing the excess capacity is borne by the supplier. Catalyst for change — An organization can use an outsourcing agreement as a catalyst for major step change that can not be achieved alone. The outsourcer becomes a Change agent in the process. Enhance capacity for innovation — Companies increasingly use external knowledge service providers to supplement limited in-house capacity for product innovation.[14][15] Reduce time to market — The acceleration of the development or production of a product through the additional capability brought by the supplier.[16] Commodification — The trend of standardizing business processes, IT Services, and application services which enable to buy at the right price, allows businesses access to services which were only available to large corporations. Risk management — An approach to risk management for some types of risks is to partner with an outsourcer who is better able to provide the mitigation.[17] Venture Capital — Some countries match government funds venture capital with private venture capital for start-ups that start businesses in their country.[18] Tax Benefit — Countries offer tax incentives to move manufacturing operations to counter high corporate taxes within another country. Scalability — The outsourced company will usually be prepared to manage a temporary or permanent increase or decrease in production. Creating leisure time — Individuals may wish to outsource their work in order to optimise their work-leisure balance.[19] Liability — Organizations choose to transfer liabilities inherent to specific business processes or services that are outside of their core competencies. [edit] Implications

Sitting in pairs, students poke at their iPads waiting for class to begin

allows students to time-stamp lecture notes