In his best-selling book “The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century,” author Thomas Friedman made the case that a combination of geopolitical forces and technology innovations combined to create a new globalized, “flat” world. As he explored in his book, and as has played out over the decade and a half since it was published, this new flat world was one in which both opportunity and competition for that opportunity we’re almost instantly global — and, in most cases, technology-driven.