Globalization is here and it's good.

But succeeding takes work, forethought, and resistance to "idiots" who say borders protect us (could he be referring to Lou Dobbs?).

In CIO Insight

A well-worn map of the world stretches the entire length of one wall in Thomas Friedman's Washington, D.C., office. Friedman, a foreign-affairs columnist for The New York Times, has marked the map with star-shaped stickers of red, gold and blue to indicate the myriad places he's traveled during his Pulitzer Prize-winning career, but, lately, he has fallen behind. "My daughter and I have to update that," he says.

Friedman's map needs updating because he has just spent the past ten months circling the globe anew, researching and writing his forthcoming book, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, April 2005).



A follow-up to Friedman's best-selling The Lexus and the Olive Tree (his first attempt and a good one at that I might add -- because I read it twice -- to understand globalization ... he argued that economic interdependence equals prosperity and peace), The World Is Flat delves even deeper into the phenomenon he believes is reshaping the economic, cultural and political landscapes of the world.

Here's another mind-opening Friedman remark, "First of all, we need leaders who will dare to describe the world to us as it really is and make us smart, not make us stupid."

For anyone serious about going global, this is a brilliantly crafted must-read interview.