Module 7

During the past twenty years, many technological advancements have taken place to allow a more global economy surrounded by free trade. As the opportunities of global trade have risen, successful nations have whole heartedly taken advantage of these new advantages. But just signing a contract to be part of free trade isn’t nearly enough to obtain a successful and profitable country, based on the example of Mexico.  Mexico entered free trade in the 1990’s, but didn’t make the proper adaptations to efficiently use the benefits resulting from the contract.

Friedman explains that countries must be honest with themselves and find where they stand in the flattening world and what adaptions need to be made to take advantage of the new platform. He also gives four adaptions and systems that need to be in place for nations to be successful in a free trade market. First a nation must have the correct infrastructure needed to connect to the rest of the world. A country will have a hard time competing or collaborating with other countries across the world if they have no internet access.

 Second is education. Although learning trades like agriculture and carpentry is still beneficial, new systems of schooling must take place. A country cannot compete in the global economy and invent new technology if they don’t have any education on computers and new technology. Even farmers need to know a great deal about computers if they are using modern technology for irrigation or harvesting.

The third aspect is governance and the ability to motivate workers to be more successful in their businesses and strive for bigger and better things. If the government of a country doesn’t have the ability to summon and focus local energies on reform retail, then it will take forever for decisions to be made and will possibly halt the progress of their economy on a global scale.

 Fourth is the right environment. If countries spend all their time industrializing instead of thinking about the effects on the environment, often times once the environment is at an awful state the economy ends up backtracking. Take for example the dustbowl. So much time and effort was spent in growing cotton and ignoring the effects to the soil from producing so much cotton that it became impossible for any farming on the soil. The soil was so dry that any wind produced major sandstorms. Because of this, all the families had to uproot themselves and start over.

One of the most important aspects of any business is customer service. In any retail or restaurant job there is always the saying “the customer comes first,” and this is completely true. Not very many people will go to a store repeatedly if they know the store has horrible customer service.  This is what makes fitting the needs of a “self-directed customer” so important.

 I would definitely consider myself a self-directed customer. One example would be the new online ordering method for Dominoes. They allow the customers to choose a variety of options for almost every step in the pizza making process. This allows the customers to make decisions at their own pace in their own home while making them feel like they are the chef creating their pizza. To me, this new way of ordering is one of the best ways of customer service.

During the early stages of globalization, other nations were worried that they would lose their culture due to America’s position as a strong global economic force, but I don’t think this is the case.  Before globalization most of our information about foreign countries was brought forth by media in a stereotypical fashion. But because of globalization, we now have a broader range of information about other nation’s cultures. Now this will only remain true if other nations take part in this new global platform. Granted there are American companies all over the world now, but as other nations grow they have just as much, or maybe even more, of a chance as American’s do to push the cultures out to the world.