Cynics ask, "What’s so important about globalization? It’s been under way for decades." In some respects, they are right. The underlying processes have indeed been evident for some time, though without making much more than a modest impact on the world’s economy. Apart from the relatively small international trade in goods and services and a few industries that globalized early, national economies have remained predominantly local.

But all this is changing. Suddenly, the pace of globalization has quickened. The gradual process that gave companies ample time to adjust has gone for good. In just a couple of decades, our economy will become substantially global.

In the past, globalization amounted to little more than evolutionary change in a few scale-driven industries. In the future, its impact will be ubiquitous, affecting services as well as manufacturing, and emerging market economies as well as the developed world. As a result, corporations in almost every sector will face the huge challenge of learning to play in a globalizing economy where many of the old rules no longer apply, and where the new rules are still being created. The global prize has never been more golden; the gales of destruction never more fierce.

A...