The changes that have taken place over the past several decades and the predictions of the changes coming in the next ten years are so well known that it would be redundant for me to repeat them. I just want to make sure that one basic point has not been missed. It is that we are at the meeting point of two massive forces: complex change and an accelerating rate of change. Ever since the mid 1970s there has been a convergence of political, economic, social, and technological forces on the global econ¬omy. Our world continues to struggle with the most profound changes imaginable. We find ourselves living in an era shaken by transformations as broad and deep as those brought on by the industrial revolution in the first years of the nineteenth century.