The logic of proximity increasingly driving globalization's evolution

Perusing an old friend's new business book called "Proximity"

I have known Rob Walcott for close to two decades. Years ago, I spoke at his annual business leader gathering (The World Innovation Network [TWIN Global]) at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management and we’ve remained in each other’s circles ever since, with plenty of common colleagues.

Rob and a colleague have a new book out, and I wanted to share my notes from reading it during my recent vacation.

Here’s my initial gut observation: Think back to Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel, and the core argument that it was the vastly “horizontal” spread of Eurasia (stretching all the way from Ireland to Japan) — that environmental sameness — that allowed civilizations there to advance more rapidly than in other parts of the world.

So, per Diamond, the “wide” parts of the world outpaced the “tall” parts, as I described in America’s New Map:

Diamond detailed how Eurasia’s development raced ahead of other continents due to an underlying environmental advantage—the horizontal (longitudinal) width of its landmass relative to its vertical (latitudinal) height. Eurasia is twice as wide (13,000 km) as it is tall (7,000 km). In contrast, Africa is proportionally taller (8,000 km tall and averaging 5,000 km in width), while the Americas are Eurasia’s opposite at 15,000 km tall versus 5,000 km at their widest—and 50 km at their thinnest.

Eurasia’s primary developmental advantage was thus its environmental sameness—that 13,000-km band stretching from Ireland to Japan. Anything (viruses, crops, animals, technologies, social advances, etc.) that thrived any- where along that vast swath found easy transmission and spread throughout the rest simply because adaptation was only minimally required.

In tall parts of the world like the Americas, that environmental sameness was limited to much thinner bands. When traversing latitudes (heading north or south), humans encountered profound environmental differences that naturally limited such developmental diffusion. What might work at one latitude typically could not find similar purchase in significantly higher or lower climes, where the environment was too different in temperature and seasonal profiles.

My book’s argument is that climate change flips that reality on its head, now making it better to be tall and thin as a continent because, in the former instance, you have more physical room to accommodate poleward migrations of people and, in the latter instance, you suffer less exposure to climate change’s worst impacts at the lower latitudes.

Again, per Diamond: environmental sameness = faster development.

What I read in Rob’s book makes a new but similar argument: where there is pervasive digitalization of human activity, an environmental sameness ensues. That environmental sameness allows for more rapid development on a more localized basis.

The book’s basic argument is stated thusly in the foreword (by a business school leader):

The Proximity notion is simple — that technology enables the production of value ever closer to actual demand.

This isn’t so much the “death of distance” (popular concept during Peak Globalization [1990-2008]) but the supremacy of closeness.

From Chapter One:

What it you could have what you want, produced and provided immediately and affordably no matter how customized — with minimal environmental impact? Products, services, experiences on demand, no magic involved.

It’s the world toward which we’re heading. A world in which constraints ease, in some cases disappear.