The 'Triple Convergence' Friedman describes in his book is the convergence of three convergences. The first is the ten 'flatteners' which he had talked about in the first part of his book: the fall of the Berlin Wall, rise in PC usage, Netscape and the Internet, work flow software, 'in-forming,' offshoring and outsourcing, uploading, insourcing, supply chain advances, and 'steroids.' The second of the convergences is in my opinion simply an offshoot of the first.
This second convergence is the evolution of business practices to take advantage of the new technologies and platforms described in the ten 'flatteners' of the first chapter. Berlin Wall plus Netscape equals large pool of cheap skilled labor in India and China to outsource and offshore to. Rise in PC ownership to ubiquitous levels plus 'in-forming' via Google and other at-your-fingertips information sources equals more informed consumers who demand more and better for less and can get it from anyone who has a PalPal account.
These mashups of 'flatteners' result in a change from vertical hierarchy, to horizontal collaboration. This is particularly true in the interactions between a corporation and its suppliers, and a corporation and its customers. Gone are the days where companies lock into contracts with select few suppliers and customers had die-hard brand loyalty. Now companies will instead put out a bid to suppliers who can provide the part for the least cost, and then a consumer will gather information on competing products in order to balance consumer reports and non-partisan reviews with the item's cost.
The terms 'exploiter' and 'exploited' imply that someone was taken advantage of to the exclusive benefit of the other party. In this case both the state of Indiana and the Indian company Tata formed a mutually beneficial relationship. The state saved a large amount of money, and the company gained a large contract for work. The problem was politics. Politicians will take anything at hand they feel can be used to manipulate the ignorant masses and turn it into a campaign issue, regardless of whether or not it even IS an issue. So apparently the Republicans got wind of the contract, made a huge stink about it which put pressure on the Democrat Governor to do something to make it look like he was pro-local Indiana. He ordered the contract canceled, and the work subdivided so local companies could bid on the pieces.
My own personal experience tells me that the final product after doing this almost certainly had numerous flaws, bugs, issues, etc. Since you have multiple different organizations each with their own idea on how to proceed with the work, when it comes time to put them all together it's like a patchwork quilt, but not nearly as useful as the blanket would be. In addition you have the added bonus of spending more money and time than you would have on the cohesive (and probably superior) product that the Indian company provides. In the end I would have to say that the exploiters were the politicians, and the exploited were the easily duped citizens.
There's so much wrong with intellectual property law in the world books could be written on it. The original idea behind patents, copyrights, and other IP laws was to encourage the development of new ideas by protecting the rights of people who invent new devices or systems. By giving them exclusive ownership of the things they create, it both motivates people to develop and invent and it allows funds generated from previous ventures to be invested in future innovations, thus resulting in advancement of society and humanity. Sounds wonderful right? The problem is that with the digitization of everything over the last two decades or so is that anything that can be turned in to 1s and 0s it has been. This has made it exponentially easier to basically steal someone else's work by simply making a copy.
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