The Final Four Flatteners and "The Triple Convergence."

Supply Chaining: it is the 7th Flattener that Friedman talked about in his book. His idea about this flattener is increasing the connections between suppliers, retailers, and customers. Wal Mart is a good example to use for this flattener. He compares this flattener, the modern retail supply chain, to a river. Wal Mart is highlighted for its use of technology to streamline its sales, distribution, and shipping management. Supply Chaining is an example of the flattening of the world because it levels the ground and boundaries between customers and manufacturers regardless of where they are in the world.

Insourcing: it is the 8^th flattener and here Friedman uses UPS as an example. He shows how the company's employees perform services for other companies, such as UPS servicing and repairing Toshiba computers and products at their own UPS hub, by UPS employees.

In-forming: it is the 9^th flattener. Friedman describes Google, as well as other search engines, as prime examples. In-forming refers to just how easy it is for people, regardless of place, to get information about different things.

'The Steroids': it is the 10^th and last Flattener that Friedman mentioned. It is a combination of small factors that help to increase the affects of outsourcing, offshoring, uploading, supply-chaining, insourcing, and in-forming. Examples used for this flattener include Mobile phones, iPods, and instant messaging.

In 2000, a new flatter came to stage. It all started from ten flatters that were converging with one another. New businesses led to the creation of new expertise. Individuals started to learn and gain new habits.

1. Convergence one: the creation of ten flattener’s convergence (platform), which allows people around the globe including businessmen, students, and workers to collaborate with each other to get their work done.           

2. Convergence two: it is the “Horizontilization”, which is the convergence of allowing different fields, instead of people, to collaborate with each other. It makes it possible for the IT people, technology users, students, and many other fields to be able to work together for certain goals. It is different than the first convergence because it is a horizontal collaboration, which requires a different set of skills.

3. Convergence three: it is a demographic convergence. In our age, India, China, Russia, the Eastern European states, and Latin America were the doors for people to participate in the global concern by opening their economic and political systems. This collaboration leads to some developments that have never seen before. The world witnessed 1.5 billion new participants.