How companies cope in this flat world?

8 Rules

1) When the world goes flat – and you are feeling flattened – reach for a shovel and dig inside yourself. Don’t try to build walls.
- Have to offer something totally unique.

2) And the small shall act big – One way small companies flourish in the flat world is by learning to act really big. And the key to being small and acting big is being quick to take advantage of all the new tools for collaboration to reach farther, faster, wider, and deeper

3) And the big shall act small – One way that big companies learn to flourish in the flat world is by learning how to act really small by enabling their customers to act really big.

4) The best companies are the best collaborators. In the flat world, more and more business will be done through collaborations within and between companies, for a very small reason: The next layers of value creation – whether in technology, marketing, biomedicine, or manufacturing – are becoming so complex that no single firm or department is going to be able to master them alone.

5) In a flat world, the best companies stay healthy by getting regular chest X-rays and then selling the results to their clients.
- Indentify problems – Solving problems – Solution as a product (business)

6) The best companies outsource to win, not to shrink. They outsource to innovate faster and more cheaply in order to grow, gain market share, and hire more and different specialists – not to save money by firing more people.

7) Oursourcing isn’t just for Benedict Arnolds. It’s also for idealists.
- Social responsible – creating better livers for some of the poor citizens of the world.

Source : THE WORLD IS FLAT, Thomas L. Friedman, 2005