World 3.0: Global Prosperity and How to Achieve It [Hardcover]

Pankaj Ghemawat (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 3, 2011

Since the financial crisis of 2008, many of us have had to reexamine our beliefs about markets and globalization. How integrated should economies really be? How much regulation is right?

Many people fuse these two dimensions of choice into one, either favoring both globalization and deregulation—or opposing both of them.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

In World 3.0, award-winning author and economist Pankaj Ghemawat reveals the folly in both of these responses. He calls for a third worldview—one in which both regulation and cross-border integration coexist and complement one another.

Ghemawat starts by exposing common assumptions about globalization to hard data, proving that the world is not nearly as globalized as we think. And he explains why the potential gains from further integration are much larger than even pro globalizers tend to believe.

He then tackles market failures and fears—job losses, environmental degradation, macroeconomic volatility, and trade and capital imbalances—that opponents of globalization often invoke. Drawing on compelling data, he shows that increased globalization can actually alleviate some of these problems.

Finally, Ghemawat describes how a wide range of players—businesses, policy makers, citizens, media—can help open up flows of ideas, people, and goods across borders, but in ways that maximize the benefits and minimize the potential side effects.

World 3.0 dispels powerfully entrenched—but incorrect—assumptions about globalization. Provocative and bold, this new book explains how people around the world can secure their collective prosperity through new approaches to cross-border integration. Ghemawat’s thinking will surprise and move you—no matter where you stand on globalization.

World 3.0 reveals how we're not nearly as globalized as we think we are, and how people around the world can secure their collective prosperity through new approaches to cross-border integration. Provocative and bold, this new book will surprise and move you, no matter where you stand on globalization.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Pankaj Ghemawat is the Anselmo Rubiralta Professor of Global Strategy at IESE Business School, in Barcelona and served for more than twenty years on the faculty of the Harvard Business School, where in 1991, he became the youngest person in the school’s history to be appointed a full professor. Ghemawat has been described by Michael Porter as “one of those rare individuals who combines world-class scholarship with a deep knowledge of business practice.” He is also the youngest “guru” included in the guide to the greatest management thinkers of all time published in 2008 by The Economist.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press (May 3, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 142213864X
• ISBN-13: 978-1422138649
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #79,438 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Pankaj Ghemawat is the Anselmo Rubiralta Professor of Global Strategy at IESE Business School. Between 1983 and 2006, he served on the faculty at the Harvard Business School where, in 1991, he became the youngest person in the school's history to be appointed a full professor. And before that, he earned his A.B. degree in Applied Mathematics and his Ph.D. in Business Economics from Harvard.

Ghemawat was also the youngest "guru" included in the guide to the greatest management thinkers of all time published in 2008 by The Economist. His books include Commitment, Games Businesses Play, Strategy and the Business Landscape and the award-winning Redefining Global Strategy, which The New York Times called " a nicely revised picture of globalization as regionalization."

He is the author of more than 100 research articles and case studies, ranks as one of the world's best-selling authors of teaching cases, and has been elected a fellow of the Academy of International Business and of the Strategic Management Society. Other recent honors include the McKinsey Award for the best article published in the Harvard Business Review and the Irwin Award for the Educator of the Year from the Business Policy and Strategy division of the Academy of Management.

Ghemawat is active in helping companies, governments, multilateral institutions, and business schools better understand and address international opportunities and challenges. He consults on strategy and leadership development around the world and is a regular speaker on globalization-related topics. He also served on the taskforce appointed by the AACSB, the U.S.-based accreditation body for business schools, on the Globalization of Management Education, and authored the report's recommendations concerning what to teach about globalization, and how.

For more information, visit www.ghemawat.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars hottest book to understand basics of economic globalization, May 1, 2011

By 

L. A. Brudner-white (san diego) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: World 3.0: Global Prosperity and How to Achieve It (Hardcover)

This is a must read for professional economists, policy wonks or those who like to be well informed both in terms of theory and facts on the competative economics of globalization. The author as the book jacket informs us is one of the youngest geniuses who has been among other things on the Harvard faculty as a full professor. He writes clearly, lucidly and in a splendid teaching mode. It is also useful to have read when you hear proposals from our own government and the claims of various pollitical parties. It has a informative discussion comparing U.S. and Chinese economic strategies, their advantages and disadvantages. However, the book goes beyond that and is a comparative discussion of wider breadth.
In the general discussion the first chapter is entitled, "colliding worldviews" and it is a discussion on different general theories about growth and about the predicaments posed by different visions and policies. Don't miss this chapter in part I. Part Two is especially interesting as the meat and potatoes of what the author terms, "Seven possible problems" is opened up and theory and data examined; this part includes solid discussions on (l)global concentration at a general level, (2)global externalities, discussing among other things costs and benefits of different economic strategies, (3) global risks, (4) global imbalances, (5) global exploitation, (6) global oppression, (7) global homogenation. For those who want to get the best update on economic aspects of globalizaiton this is a book to have read as it is very precise about how business, economic policy really works and the bibliography is splendid.
It goes well beyond Thomas Friedman's, The World is Flat in its empirical detail.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Overly optimistic, but still one of the the best books I've read on globalisation, July 25, 2011

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A. Lansink "Ton" (Netherlands) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: World 3.0: Global Prosperity and How to Achieve It (Hardcover)

While I was reading mr. Ghemawat's book on World 3.0 or `rooted cosmopolism', a young Norwegian killed almost a hundred of his compatriots, ostensibly as an act against multi-culturalism. This atrocious incident is perhaps the best illustration of the single flaw I found in this book: the context and style of a fundamentally positive attitude towards more integration.

Such an attitude is to be expected from a footloose Harvard economist with Indian ancestors living in Barcelona. Nevertheless, mr. Ghemawat's book is the best book I have read on the issue of globalization since the utterly disappointing first book I read on this issue by Thomas Friedman: "Lexus and the Olive Tree". Mr. Ghemawatt struggles to phantom the effects of non-financial motives on human behavior, but at least he spells out a framework for his readers to better understand these issues. In doing so he presents the reader with a wealth of information that underscores his basic point that the world is only semi-globalized, that distance matters and will continue to matter.

At times, as I indicated, I found his optimistic overtone in presenting the information detracting from the fundamental issues they exposed. A case in point. As citizens we spent almost 100% of our lives in our local neighborhood as witnessed by the telephone calls we place. Trade and equity investment are for more than 70% national matters. The highest indicator for `globalisation' is a surprising one: governmental debt, which is 40% foreign. I'm quite a bit more worried than mr. Ghemawat that the current system has created a crisis that puts strain on governing bodies of societies. It may lead to increasing doubts about legitimacy and thus distrust of basic political structures. Perhaps his framing of these issues as being `administrative' and `cultural' have lead him to overlook the fundamental political problem of the control of violence in society and the havoc a breakdown in that political control can create.

Having said that, I would not have wanted to miss the opportunity to become privy to mr. Ghemawat's world of thinking. His way of approaching the issue of global integration, the wealth of information, knowledge and insights he shares, makes it a valuable book that I recommend to everyone seeking a more balanced framework for understanding the characteristics of our interconnected world.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A superb and sane book on a contentious topic, July 13, 2011

By 

Guy P. Pfeffermann "An economist" (Chevy Chase, MD USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: World 3.0: Global Prosperity and How to Achieve It (Hardcover)

This is a must-read book.

Amid increasing ideological polarization, Professor Ghemawat's "World 3.0" provides a refreshingly balanced view of "globalization". Unlike some recent pop-business and pop-economics books, which draw over-simplified conclusions from a few "illustrative" cases, this is a scholarly book grounded in macro and micro economics as well as business knowledge. It is a pleasure to read, studded as it is with apt cartoons and witty headings (e.g., "Anxious in Andorra", written with verve.

As a retired Chief Economist who worked for 40 years at the World Bank, I am impressed by the breadth and depth of the book. It focuses on interactions between individual country and the rest of the world. These are mainly economic and financial (imports, exports, foreign investment, migration, and so forth) but also cultural, psychological, and in the concluding chapter about human potential. The author considers the likely impact of internationalization on equity as well as well as growth.

The book posits four "Worlds". In World 0.0 life was "nasty, brutish and short". This was a world without Government - think of Somalia or a Tea Party utopia. Fast-forwarding a thousand years, in World 1.0, nations were largely self-contained. Then came the Industrial Revolution, "globalization" with its ardent proponents - e.g., Thomas Friedman's "The World is Flat" and no less zealous detractors such as Naomi Klein.

Professor Ghemawat steps back from these noisy polemics and presents readers with a wealth of facts, which individually as well as in the aggregate demonstrate that while international activities have increased enormously since the Industrial Revolution, they remain modest in relation to national economic, financial and cultural activities. The book is full of surprising statistics. To mention one: Japan is the world's fourth largest exporter, yet in 2009 it total exports of goods and services amounted to only 13 percent of the country's gross domestic product.

World 3.0 is one of "semi-globalization", a realistic world where distance matters hugely and nations retain primary control of their economic destinies. In some areas - for example short-term capital flows - globalization does present risks which governments can mitigate. In many if not most others, there remains plenty of room for facilitating greater internationalization, as this would lead to greater prosperity.

Last but not least, Professor Ghemawat offers several conceptual frameworks which will be useful to governments as well as companies in shaping their own international strategies.

In sum, "World 3.0" offers readers a sane antidote to ideological worldviews, the "silent majority's take" on globalization.