In Thomas Friedman's forthcoming book "The World is Flat" he asks, "In 2020, what will historians view as the definitive driver that shaped the world over the past twenty years, 9/11 or new phase of globalization?

At the Arab Strategy Forum last month that latter and proposed a simple framework for this new era of globalization:
- Business 1.0: 1492-1800 countries globalized
- Business 2.0: 1800-2000 companies globalized
- Business 3.0: 2000-2040 individuals globalized

To compete in business 3.0, he suggested that government policies must engender the following policies to enable their citizens to succeed:
1. Make it possible to quickly start a business (2 years in Egypt in 2004)
2. Make it easy to hire and fire (accelerate idea birth and death)
3. Enforce contracts (without bribes)
4. Ease of credit (make it easy to go bankrupt)

Summing up his thoughts, he reiterated that the era of lifetime employment is gone and that individuals will migrate to geographies that support lifetime employability. Moreover, the development of human capital would require more flexibility in terms of their use of emerging tools to compete in this radically competitive economic environment. While not stating it outright, I would assert that this would include enabling neurotechnologies such as cogniceuticals to improve memory retention and neurofeedback systems to accelerate one's understanding of their emotional propensities. Neurotechology is already driving competitive advantage among individuals in the Business 3.0 political-economic ecology.