Don't You Love Thomas Friedman's Opinion Pieces?

©iStock/mizoula

In Thomas Friedman's latest Opinion piece for The New York Times (8/19/25), he says:  

"I am really trying to be fair in analyzing the Trump-Putin-Zelensky-Europe drama that has been playing out the past few weeks. I am trying to balance President Trump’s commendable desire to end the murderous war in Ukraine with the utterly personalized, seat-of-the-pants, often farcical way he is going about it — including the energy that everyone involved has to expend feeding his ego and avoiding his wrath, before they even get to the hellish compromises needed to make peace.

For now, the whole thing leaves me deeply uncomfortable."

Dear readers, find out why.

America's Future Depends In Part on Globalization

iStock/Thinkstock

That's according to: America Needs a Makeover

“America's future—and the future of the world beyond America—depends on how well we deal with” four issues, they argue ... globalization ...

Read more here.  And Thomas Friedman is quoted.

Posted by:  The Global Small Business Blog

Thomas Friedman: Just do it

iStock/Thinkstock

In case you missed Friedman's column in the April 17th edition of The New York Times, here's a snippet before I give you the link to the real deal:

EndoStim was inspired by Cuban and Indian immigrants to America and funded by St. Louis venture capitalists. Its prototype is being manufactured in Uruguay, with the help of Israeli engineers and constant feedback from doctors in India and Chile. Oh, and the C.E.O. is a South African, who was educated at the Sorbonne, but lives in Missouri and California, and his head office is basically a BlackBerry. While rescuing General Motors will save some old jobs, only by spawning thousands of EndoStims — thousands — will we generate the kind of good new jobs to keep raising our standard of living.

Read the entire contribution here:

Just Doing It

The Do-It-Yourself Global Economy

iStock/Thinkstock

There's certainly no good reason why you can't do this same project across borders. An excerpt from Thomas L. Friedman's Op-Ed column in The New York Times (12/12/09):

Two examples, one small, one large: The first is my childhood friend, Ken Greer, who owns a marketing agency in Minneapolis, Greer & Associates. The Great Recession has forced him to radically downsize, but the Great Inflection has made him radically more productive. He illustrated this by telling me about a film he recently made for a nonprofit.
“The budget was about 20 percent of what we normally would charge,” said Greer. “After one meeting with the client, almost all our communication was by e-mail. The script was developed and approved using a collaborative tool provided by www.box.net. Internally, we all could look at the script no matter where we were, make suggestions and get to a final draft with complete transparency — easy, convenient and free. We did not have a budget to shoot new footage, yet we had no budget either for stock photography the old way — paying royalties of $100 to $2,000 per image. We found a source, istockphoto.com, which offered great photos for as little as a few dollars.
“We could easily preview all the images, place them in our program to make sure they worked, purchase them online and download the high-resolution versions — all in seconds,” Greer added. “We had a script that called for 4 to 5 voices. Rather than hiring local voice talent — for $250 to $500 per hour — we searched the Internet for high-quality voices that we could afford. We found several sites offering various forms of narration or voice-overs. We selected www.voices.com. In less than one minute, we created an account, posted our requirements and solicited bids. Within five minutes, we had 10 to 15 ‘applicants’ ” — charging 10 percent of what Greer would have paid live talent.
“Best part,” he said, “within minutes we had sample reads, which could be placed into our film to see if the voices fit. We selected our finalists, wrote them with more specific instructions and within hours had the final read delivered to us via MP3 files over the Web. We could get any accent or ethnicity we wanted. For music, we used a site called www.audiojungle.net,” where he could sample thousands of cuts of music and sound effects with the click of a mouse, and then buy them for pennies.
By being able to access all these cheap tools, Greer got to focus on his value-add: imagination.

Read the entire column here. When you attempt to access cheap tools and focus on your value add, take it global.

Globalization Matters

iStock/Thinkstock

Technology and globalization
have changed our economy forever. ~ Carly Fiorina

Carly Fiorina, former chief executive of Hewlett Packard, told some 2,300 members of the International Franchise Association yesterday in her keynote address at their annual convention being held in San Diego, that businesses, which she says have created two-thirds of jobs in the country, will lead the way to restore America’s faith in how business operates.

“If we’re going to get our economy working again, we have to pay attention on how to get people and small businesses to perform and prosper ... I think you are vital to the restoration of growth in our economy ... It is innovation and entrepreneurship that will lead us out of this economic crisis. Not big government, not big business, not big labor.”

Way back when in his "The World Is Flat" book, Thomas Friedman wrote about how technology and globalization have changed our lives forever.

Read more about her Carly's talk here.

Hot, Flat and Crowded

iStock/Thinkstock

The book claims to be a rousing manifesto for our climate-challenged future.

The front cover says:

Why we need a green revolution -- and how it can renew America.

He's back.

Interesting Column By Thomas Friedman

iStock/Thinkstock

A fascinating post by one of my favorite minds: Thomas Friedman. It's a little off course to our work here but once in a while you just to have go with it -- provided it's that good. And it is.

Is Friedman's Flat World Deeply Skewed?

iStock/Thinkstock

Join the debate.

An Interview with Thomas Friedman

iStock/Thinkstock

Business Strategies Magazine conducts an interview with Thomas J. Friedman, New York Times columnist and author of "The World Is Flat."

"I've been at the right place and the right time to see a lot of things ... What that's made me is very much someone who is aware of the important role that America plays in the world."

Read the interview here.