Friedman has been a columnist for the New York Times since 1995. Before that, he reported for the Times from the Middle East where he was bureau chief in Beirut and Jerusalem and served as a White House correspondent. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize twice for international reporting (1983 and 1988) and once for commentary (2002). He is the author of several books, including The Lexus and the Olive Tree, That Used to Be Us, and Thank You for Being Late. He was born in Minneapolis, and he earned a BA from Brandeis University and an MPhil from the University of Oxford.  

Nilekani is a co-founder and former CEO of Infosys, an Indian firm that provides various business services such as outsourcing and consulting. He gave Friedman the idea that “the world is flat” when he told Friedman, “Tom, the playing field is being leveled” (7). Friedman visits one of Infosys’s call centers to see this leveling in action. Nilekani also gave Friedman the idea for one of the flatteners discussed in Chapter 2, insourcing, by alerting him to the fact that UPS had started doing much more than delivering packages.