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Fast Company's latest issue covered a great perspective on the "world is flat" idea, discussed by Richard Florida (originator and advocate of the "Creative Class"), in his book Who's Your City?.  The general premise?

The world is not flat, a notion widely popularized by Thomas Friedman, but rather spiky.  Florida proposes that the geographic regions of the world at large, can be classified into four general types or clusters, based on population and socioeconomic circumstances.  What are the four clusters?

Four kinds of places make up the landscape of our spiky world: first, the tallest spikes that attract global talent, generate knowledge, and produce the lion's share of global innovation. Second are the emerging peaks that use established ideas, often imported, to produce goods and services. Some of these cities, such as Dublin and Seoul, are transitioning into places that generate innovation, but most, from Guadalajara to Shanghai, function primarily as the manufacturing and service centers of the 21st-century global economy. The two remaining types of places are being left behind: third-world megacities distinguished by large-scale "global slums," with high levels of social and political unrest and little meaningful economic activity; and the huge valleys of the spiky world, rural areas with little concentration of population or economic activity.

A few interesting, additional observations made by Florida are that 1) the world is much more "flat" and connected for those in the "spikes", or areas of innovation and concentrated talent.  Thus, those that inhabit and frequently travel between cities like London, Paris, Shanghai, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Tokyo, Singapore, etc. are much more likely to be connected in the way that Thomas Friedman alludes to.  2) The divide between these areas and the bottom two areas, the developing world and rural areas, is growing dramatically. 

This spikey/cluster concept was first introduced to me a few years ago in a talk by a futurist at the Commonwealth Club.  I think Florida's depiction paints a much more accurate portrayal of the world with respect to socioeconomics.  I live in and frequently travel in cities that would be considered spikes, but I have also lived in and traveled through places that would be at the bottom of the rungs.  From a cultural standpoint, there is a shift in the way someone like myself might connect to people in the rural areas of my own country and people in the spikes of other countries.  It largely depends on context.  My ability to relate to a farmer in Nebraska might be much stronger in areas of politics, family, and issues that ring home in my American upbringing.  However, in certain contexts, my ability to connect with the young, technologically hip, professional in Shanghai is markedly stronger than a farmer in Nebraska.  This would be apparent on issues of business, lifestyle, and world affairs, etc...

This also helps to bring a more accurate description to the socioeconomic circumstances of very dynamic, emerging economies like China.  Many of the China-hype articles that have been published in top business magazines over the last few years, depict China as a country ready to challenge the world in areas like innovation, design, and other cutting-edge capacities.  These articles are most assuredly talking about an extremely small, handful of people and companies in the spikiest of clusters like Shanghai.  Articles like this often serve as a reader's only impression of China, if they have never done business there.  It's no wonder that hype like this has fostered fear and suspicion of China's imminent challenge to other economies in these areas.  In reality, China, in many ways, is still a country of rural peasants.  There are world-class talent and capabilities there, but believe you me, it's a relatively small group of people in the spiky clusters.

So many products today are often truly global when considering who and what places are involved in developing, producing, marketing, and buying them.  Not only does this process bring together people in different geographic areas, it involves adept management of people across several of the clusters at one time, to capture the benefits and strengths of each in the process.