Why Thomas Friedman's Protectionist Column on Innovation is Wrong

Earlier this month, the New York Times’s Thomas Friedman wrote a column about Indian startups called Do Believe the Hype. 

Friedman takes a rather extreme view of the burgeoning of India’s startups – calling this movement “scary” and “depending on your perspective…a sign of the apocalypse.”

I find this protectionist sort of viewpoint strange. Don’t social innovations, like mobile banking which enables people in rural or otherwise off-the-grid type areas access to institutionalized forms of savings and transfer of funds, benefit us all? If I can save more, transfer money more easily, become richer, and make my business more efficient, that’s good for GDP and the economy as a whole – domestic and global – as innovations can, and will, be exported.