Parag Khanna is the author of Move, The Future is Asian, and Technocracy in America. He’s also the founder of AlphaGeo, which uses data to look at the stability of companies, nations, and geographies, so governments and organizations can make the best decisions about our future.
I have read and extensively quoted Khanna’s work in mine, and even spoke to him for a series I wrote last year about a post-cultural future (or at least, a future where culture isn’t tied to ethnicity—here’s part one and two). Now I’m talking to him in research for a series on the role of companies in creating a borderless future.
Catch our complete discussion above or the highlights from our conversation below:
Metanational companies are global companies without borders
They just think of the entire world as supply and demand… the borders, countries, regulations are just friction.
Global companies are creating regional headquarters with international talent from around the world.
One of the first anecdotes that got me interested in this topic was being in the Balkins and seeing Bosnians and Serbians, who fought a war against each other—side by side in a McKinsey office you will find Bosnians and Serbians, and they won’t think anything of it.
Go to Dubai today and walk in the office of PwC or Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn—you’re going to see Egyptians, Israelis, Palestinians, Jordanians, Saudis, and Iranians. Whatever their countries or even their societies feel about each other, their prejudices and so forth, that literally does melt away in the office of either a multinational or metanational and I think that’s a great thing.
Demand for international jobs is only increasing.
Employees will favor a company that will let them move to a country where they have a four day workweek. As Japan or Finland says we’re going to have a four day work week, suddenly everyone is applying to get into that country. Geographic arbitrage within a company, and the right to do so, is something that helps make a company sticky for employees to want to work for. There’s never been a better time in world history to be young, skilled, and mobile. Every country wants you, every company wants you.
Countries want companies.
Smart countries are always trying to attract investment. Dumb countries push investment away. It is in a country’s interest to have investment—in the form of a company having an office there, having talent there, hiring locals, training people, building businesses, raising productivity—all good things. It’s win-win, and it’s generally always been win-win.
As Ulrich Beck says, “The only thing worse than being overrun by multinational corporations, is not being overrun by multinational corporations.”

Countries who can’t attract companies, don’t earn enough money to be a good country for their citizens.
In geopolitics we have systems change: We think of the world of having this foundation of states and sovereignty and that is the ultimate power. But the world of corporations, as powerful as they are, that optionality gives them leverage over states. Yes, they don’t have territories or armies, ultimately they can be regulated, shut down, nationalized, their assets appropriated—that could happen. But they could also pick up and move and deny a government the tax revenue, the investment, the technology and so forth. It’s a more level playing field.