Today’s biggest business challenge involves knowing how to respond to a world in which the frame and basis of competition are always changing. Against that backdrop, any effort to set corporate strategy must consider more than just traditional performance measures, such as a company’s core capabilities and the structure of the industry in which it competes. Managers must also gain an understanding of deep external forces and the narrower trends that they can unleash.

In a major research effort, McKinsey identified five global forces whose impact—individually and in confluence with other trends—is rewriting the list of opportunities and challenges facing global business. ...