In today’s economic climate, one would be hard pressed to deny that we have a global economy – just follow the NYSE each day as news regarding Greece’s debt crisis is released. Yet money is not all that ties the world together. More and more goods and services are coming from more and more foreign countries; our classrooms are filled with more and more international students and our offices with more employees of increasingly diverse origins and backgrounds. We are now living in the age of globalization, which according to Thomas Friedman is the “inexorable integration” of just about everything.

In The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Friedman posits globalization is the defining ethos of our time, the successor of the Cold War system that defined our politics, international relations and economy for 50 years. To fully understand globalization, in Friedman’s mind, one must view the world through six dimensions, or lenses, simultaneously. By looking at the world through the various perspectives of technology, environmentalism, politics, culture, national security and financial markets, one can fully grasp globalization and its impacts. In essence, globalization is the human equivalent to a butterfly flapping its wings in one part of the world and creating a hurricane in another.

In the end, Friedman has produced a thorough and easily consumable explanation of globalization and its impact on our lives. It should be required reading for all college students, not just business majors, and should probably be required orientation material for most businesses. After all, globalization, at its core, ultimately ties the distant and disparate together, and in an ever-changing business environment that requires constant and continued innovation, such integration is beyond helpful, it is necessary.