Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Our intuition on how the world works could well be wrong. We are surprised when new competitors burst on the scene, or businesses protected by large and deep moats find their defenses easily breached, or vast new markets are conjured from nothing. Trend lines resemble saw-tooth mountain ridges.

The world not only feels different. The data tell us it is different. Based on years of research by the directors of the McKinsey Global Institute, No Ordinary Disruption: The Four Forces Breaking all the Trends is a timely and important analysis of how we need to reset our intuition as a result of four forces colliding and transforming the global economy: the rise of emerging markets, the accelerating impact of technology on the natural forces of market competition, an aging world population, and accelerating flows of trade, capital and people.

Our intuitions formed during a uniquely benign period for the world economy--often termed the Great Moderation. Asset prices were rising, cost of capital was falling, labour and resources were abundant, and generation after generation was growing up more prosperous than their parents.

But the Great Moderation has gone. The cost of capital may rise. The price of everything from grain to steel may become more volatile. The world's labor force could shrink. Individuals, particularly those with low job skills, are at risk of growing up poorer than their parents.

What sets No Ordinary Disruption apart is depth of analysis combined with lively writing informed by surprising, memorable insights that enable us to quickly grasp the disruptive forces at work. For evidence of the shift to emerging markets, consider the startling fact that, by 2025, a single regional city in China--Tianjin--will have a GDP equal to that of the Sweden, of that, in the decades ahead, half of the world's economic growth will come

from 440 cities including Kumasi in Ghana or Santa Carina in Brazil that most executives today would be hard-pressed to locate on a map.

What we are now seeing is no ordinary disruption but the new facts of business life-- facts that require executives and leaders at all levels to reset their operating assumptions and management intuition.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Technology and extreme growth in developing countries is changing the marketplace and challenging years of conventional market wisdom, with emerging-market companies able to challenge world markets faster then ever. Coauthors Dobbs, James Manyika, and Jonathan Woetzel, directors of the McKinsey Global Institute, identify four disruptive forces creating a dramatic transition in the world economy, a transition they argue will have a greater impact than the industrial revolution. The forces include the shifting of economic activity from the developed to the developing world, the speed and economic impact of technological advancement, changing world demographics as birth rates decrease, and global interconnectivity-allowing for competition from every corner of the world. The authors state that this work is not intended as a business self-help guide with steps to follow. Instead, they defend their claims while utilizing a multitude of examples from Facebook and WeChat to textile companies, thereby illustrating unexpected market challenges and the impact of technology. -VERDICT While, as the authors acknowledge, this is not a how-to resource, it is nonetheless an intriguing work for those interested in the business impacts of globalization.-Casey Watters, Shanghai Jiao Tong Univ. © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

CHOICE Review

Dobbs, Manyika, and Woetzel (who are all directors of the McKinsey Global Institute, based in London, Silicon Valley, and China) provide an overview and the economic implications of four fundamental disruptive trends: the shift of economic activity and dynamism to emerging markets; accelerating, ubiquitous technology involving burgeoning information availability; aging populations; and interconnected global flows of capital, people, and information. The authors spice their arguments with striking quotes and data; among the former (in a chapter titled "Getting Old Isn't What It Used to Be") is "maybe the robots will take care of us." Statements such as "the more connected you are, the better off you are" (in "Trade, People, Finance, and Data: Greater Global Connections") are backed up by data-laden explanations. Numerous charts offer clear data that reflect relatively recent findings. The authors intend the book as an intuition reset to make new market and society challenges clear to readers as areas of concern. Helpful solutions, e.g., embedding curiosity and learning in organizations, are presented. That said, some admonitions, such as focusing on opportunities rather than hazards, are cause for head scratching. Those interested in a broader treatment may wish to seek out the work of Rohit Talwar. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above; professionals. --Charles Wankel, St. John's University, New York

Kirkus Book Review

Danger! Opportunity! In this snack from the business-class galley, three McKinsey Global Institute researchers serve up a view of a future that "presents difficult, often existential challenges to leaders of companies, organizations, cities, and countries." Creative destruction is one thing. Plain old destruction is quite another, and in the modern marketplace, it's not always easy to tell the two apart. "Ours is a world of near-constant discontinuity," write Dobbs, Manyika, and Woetzel, which will come as little comfort to those seeking peace and quiet. It's a world of interrupted development, disequilibrium, and a thorough overhaul of whatever once passed for normal. The United States is now exporting oil, India is emerging as a leader in space exploration, and China is developing a large consumer class with new holidays such as Singles Day, a kind of antidote to Valentine's Day. Trend watchers who read the Financial Times and the Economist will know all this, but readers who don't bother to look far beyond our shores may be a little disquieted to learn that part of the disruption is a remaking of the world's emerging markets, especially in unexpected places and to unexpected ends. "Seven emerging markets," write the authors, "will be fueling almost half of all global GDP growth over the coming decade," the news there being that Indonesia and Turkey now figure on the list. Other pieces of the authors' puzzle should surprise no one: the world, for instance, is getting grayer, they observe. Some of the authors' closing recommendations are standard business dictums: get more agile, get smarter. But some go deeper, such as the idea that government regulation, so often the bugaboo of the financier class, can actually be put to advantage to "set standards and define the rules of conduct and markets." Libertarians may squall, but investors just beginning to look at emerging market trends may find value in this book. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.