Chapter 10 Chapter 3 Triple Confluence (1)

What is triple confluence?To shed light on this, let me tell a personal story and share with you one of my favorite TV commercials. This story happened in March 2004, when I was going to take a Southwest Airlines flight from Baltimore to Hartford (the capital of Connecticut) to see my daughter Ollie, who was studying in New Haven, the state.Since I'm someone who is open to new technology, instead of buying a paper ticket, I booked an e-ticket through Amex.Anyone who has flown frequently with Southwest Airlines knows that there are no seat reservations on the low-cost flights there, and when you check in, your boarding pass just says A,B,CA passengers board first , the B card is next, and the C card passengers are at the end. No one wants to ask for the C card, because the C card holders can only find the middle seat, and there is no way to find an empty space in the suitcase above the seat.If you want window and aisle seats and a place to store your luggage, you want to get an A.I brought a lot of clothes for my daughter that time, and of course I wanted to get the A card, so I got up early and arrived at the airport 95 minutes before the departure time of the plane.I walk up to Southwest's e-ticketing machine, insert my credit card, and touch the screen to select my ticket—quite a stylish man, isn't he?

However, it was the B card that came out.I looked at my watch and said to myself angrily: "How can it be a B card, there can't be so many people here before me, someone cheated, this was arranged in advance. This is just a vending machine! " I angrily stomped through security, bought a Cinnabon, and sat gloomily in the back of column B, hoping to be lucky enough to find a spot in the overhead locker. 40 minutes later, the airport informed us that our flight was starting to board.I stood in line in column B and looked jealously at the passengers in column A ahead of me. At this time, I found that the ticket in the hands of passengers in column A was different from mine, and it was not an ordinary electronic ticket at all.The tickets in their hands are like crumpled white paper, but with boarding passes and barcodes printed on them, these boarding passes seem to be printed out with a printer after downloading from the Internet at home.I quickly proved my guess was correct.Although I only know about this situation, Southwest Airlines has announced before that, starting from 0:01 on the night before the flight date, you can download the ticket at home, print it out, and then you can directly check it out before boarding. Scan the barcode on your ticket at the entrance.

After seeing this scene, I said to myself, "Friedman, you're only a 20th-century man... You are a person of Globalization 2.0. “Let’s think about it: In the age of Globalization 1.0, ticket brokers are all the rage. I used to have to go to a ticket office in downtown DC, get a number, wait in line, and talk face-to-face with a ticket agent to arrange my flight plan.In the era of Globalization 2.0, electronic ticket issuing machines have replaced ticket agents.We think it's pretty cool.And this happened only a few years ago.But just as you were dozing off, we entered the era of Globalization 3.0, and now you become your own ticket agent.Or, in other words, you personally become an employee of Southwest Airlines.Or to put it another way, think about the hours you've spent staying up late at night in front of your computer to book your own tickets, and realize that while you're an employee of Southwest Airlines, you're still paying for Southwest Airlines!

This is a TV ad for Konica Minolta Business Technology Manufacturing's new multifunction device Bizhub. Bizhub is an office product that allows you to print, copy, fax, scan, email, and fax in black and white or color all on one machine.The commercial begins with a conversation between two people, one in his office and the other standing next to a Bizhub machine.They were so close that they could hear each other just by raising their voices a little.Dom is a bit more senior, but like me, he's slow to embrace new technology.All he had to do was lean back in his chair to see Ted standing by the Bizhub machine through the doorway.

Dom: (at the table) Hey, I need that chart. Ted: (at the Bizhub machine) I'm emailing. Dom: Are you using the copier to send emails? Ted: No, I'm using Bizhub to send emails. Dom: Bizhub?Wait a minute, did you make a copy for me? Ted: I scan and make copies. Dom: You scan things with the e-mail machine? Ted: The e-mail machine?I am using Bizhub machine. Dom: (confused) Copy? Ted: (trying to be patient) E-mail, then scan, then copy. Dom: (After a long time) Bizhub? Voiceover: (Screen an animation of Bizhub showing its versatility) Amazing versatility and affordable price.This is Konica Minolta's Bizhub. (Cut to Dom alone at the Bizhub, to see if this amazing machine can pour coffee into his mug.)

Southwest Airlines provides the at-home booking system, Konica Minolta provides the Bizhub technology, all because of what I call triple convergence.What are the components of the triple confluence?To put it simply, first, around the year 2000, the 10 flattening factors discussed earlier had begun to converge, making the world flatter.Finally, when the flattening process was in full swing, billions of people from China, India, and the former Soviet Union stepped onto the playing field, and they quickly took advantage of all the new tools of the flat world to compete and cooperate with others. The convergence of the three.

Now, let's take a closer look at these issues. The first major convergence, the 10 flattening factors I discussed in Chapter 2, have been around since at least the 1990s, but they had to spread, take hold, and interconnect across the globe to work their magic.For example, sometime in 2003, Southwest Airlines realized that the world's PC and broadband penetration, computer storage, and software technology were advanced enough that it could create a workflow system that customers could choose to download at home. and print their boarding passes as easily as downloading an email. Southwest Airlines and its customers can now cooperate in new ways.Meanwhile, the convergence of workflow software and hardware has allowed Konica Minolta to provide services such as scanning, printing, faxing, copying and e-mailing on a single machine.This is the first confluence.

As Stanford University economist Paul.As Romer points out, economists have long believed that "there are complementary goods in the market—good A is greatly enhanced in value if you own good A and good B at the same time. For example, being able to own paper It is already good to have pencils at the same time, and improve the quality of pencils while improving the quality of paper, and your efficiency will be greatly improved. This is the simultaneous improvement of complementary products.” My point is that the fall of the Berlin Wall, the rise of the PC, Netscape, workflow, outsourcing, offshoring, open source, insourcing, supply chain, information provision, and steroids all reinforce each other like complementary products .The moment came around the year 2000 when the 10 factors that were flattening the world came together on such a scale and with such intensity that suddenly billions of people on every continent began to feel that something... something ...is brand new.They can't always describe exactly what happened, but by the year 2000 they felt that they were able to connect with people they had never been able to reach before, they were being challenged by people who had never been able to challenge them before, they They're competing with people they've never competed with before, they're collaborating with people they've never worked with before, they're doing things they never dreamed of doing before.

What they are experiencing is a world that is flattening. The confluence of the 10 factors that are flattening the world has created a whole new platform.This and the global, web-based competition platform on which many forms of collaboration exist.This platform enables individuals, groups, companies, and universities anywhere in the world to innovate, produce, educate, research, entertain (ah, and war) This is an unprecedented platform for creativity.The operation of this platform is no longer restricted by geography, space, and time, and in the near future it will not even be restricted by language.Moving forward, this platform will be at the center of everything.Wealth and power will increasingly be concentrated in the hands of countries, companies, individuals, universities, and groups that successfully accomplish three basic tasks: building the infrastructure connected to this flat world platform; There are many talents who can innovate on this platform, work under this platform, and successfully access this platform; finally, through successful governance, we can get the best things from this platform and prevent the worst side effects.

However, not everyone has access to this new platform, this new arena.When I say the world has flattened, I don't mean we are becoming more and more equal.What I'm trying to say is that more people in more places are now able to access this flat world platform to connect, compete, collaborate and, unfortunately, destroy each other like never before. After the publication of this book, Kevin, one of the founders of Wired magazine.Kelly (Kevin Kelly) , wrote an article commemorating the 10th anniversary of Netscape's IPO.At the end of the article, he declares in his own way that this platform (which he calls a machine) that can accommodate multiple ways of cooperation is in fact the beginning of an era that is infinitely new and infinitely great.As he wrote in the August 2005 issue of Wired magazine: 3,000 years from now, when people look back, I believe that our ancient time—at the cusp of the third millennium—will be It is regarded as "the beginning of a new historical era".In the years since Netscape went public, people began to use their intelligence to animate inert objects, connect them into a global venue, and then integrate their own minds into one.This will be seen as the biggest, most complex and most breathtaking time on the planet.Through crystals and radio waves, our race began to connect all regions, all processes, all facts and concepts into one vast network.This embryonic neural network will evolve into a cooperative interface of our civilization.

The second largest convergence, as the most basic operating system platform for innovation and production, itself has not evolved dramatically.Introducing a new technology or platform like the flat world is not enough to substantially increase labor productivity.Only when a new technology or a new technology platform is combined with a new way of doing business will there be a jump in labor productivity, and this always takes time.It will take time for all supporting technologies, business processes and habits to be integrated to achieve further breakthroughs in labor productivity.Wal-Mart was able to achieve this productivity jump because it combined a large warehouse (where people could buy enough soap to last six months) and a new, horizontal supply chain management system (which allowed Wal-Mart to instantly transform Kansas shoppers at a Wal-Mart in the city and a Wal-Mart supplier on the coast of China).We are now at the beginning of a massive, global shift in habits where a lot of people are getting onto the platform and learning how to use it.This is what I like to call horizontalization process, which is the second largest convergence that is currently taking place to flatten the world.That's all I want to say. When computers were first used as office gadgets, everyone expected a breakthrough in productivity, but it didn't happen right away. Instead, people felt disappointed and confused.The famous economist Robert.Computers are everywhere, Solow quips, but they just aren't in the "data on productivity." Economic historian Paul. A. David, in his 1989 paper "Computers and Generators: The Productivity Paradox of the Present," uses history to explain this hysteresis.He noted that although the light bulb was invented in 1879, electrification began and became effective decades later.Why?Because simply installing electric motors and abandoning old technology (steam engines) did not mean anything, the entire production process had to be modified. David pointed out that as far as electrification itself is concerned, the key technological breakthrough lies in how to redesign and manage buildings and production lines.Factories in the steam age were generally tall, costly, multi-storey buildings designed to accommodate the huge conveyor belts and other conveying facilities of the steam-powered system.Once small but powerful electric motors enter production life, everyone expects a quick increase in productivity.However, this will take time.You need to redesign the buildings, you need to have that kind of long, low, single-story plant with small enough electric motors to power machines of all sizes.Only when a large number of experienced factory designers, electricians and managers appeared, these people who understood the complementarity of electric motors and guided how to redesign factories and production lines could truly make electrification drive productivity levels.