He has always been cautiously optimistic about globalisation, warning people against falling for platitudes such as 'the world is flat' by the likes of columnist Thomas Friedman. Ghemawat, a professor at New York University's Stern School of Business, had argued in his 2011 work, World 3.0, and even earlier that globalisation wasn't a given, and that the globe was actually 'getting pulled apart'.
Today, those warnings sound prescient. A PhD student at Harvard Business School at age 19 and the youngest full-time professor at the university ever, Ghemawat is the creator of the DHL Global Connectedness Index to measure globalisation. In his recent book, The Laws of Globalization and Business Applications, he updates his contrarian argument on global growth.
(For the complete list of power of argument in 50 portraits click here)