An empirical rule

I recently read a piece from the Atlantic Monthly called “The World is Spiky”. In the article, the author, Richard Florida elaborates on his research on globalization and presents interesting facts on the increasing spikiness of the world. Increasingly populations, and consequently human activity is being densely concentrated in urban areas worldwide. Innovation is being driven by a bunch of cities , mostly in the developed world. Even spikier is scientific advance, which can be possible only by a concentration of creative and talented people.

While we may assume, given all the press that Thomas Friedman has received, that the “World is Flat”, a closer peek justifies the empirical rule that I have set for myself – “There is always heterogeneity hidden there somewhere.” You just need to peer closely.