With Fortune Favors the Bold: What We Must Do to Build a New and Lasting Global Prosperity, Lester Thurow follows on his bestsellers The Zero-Sum Society and The Future of Capitalism by addressing the path to globalization. Thurow--a Professor of Management and Economics at MIT's Sloan School--draws uncompromising conclusions: only a bold embrace of globalization will bring prosperity, and nations that fail to engage in global economics will fall behind the world's dominant powers.

He sees three simultaneous revolutions that fuel the rush to global business: the birth of knowledge-based industry, the creation of a global economy built on a worldwide information infrastructure, and the victory of capitalism. But Thurow is not naively optimistic about the prospects for prosperity in this new framework. The U.S. trade deficit, the Chinese export economy, the SARS epidemic, and the stagnating Japanese economy all offer real threats to short-term and long-term well-being.

Some readers will be frustrated that Fortune Favors the Bold does not deliver a detailed set of solutions to these impediments to global prosperity, despite Thurow's thorough research. The U.S. trade deficit, like the absence of international intellectual property rights, he labels a "dilemma": a problem that has no prescriptive answer. Crises will occur, he suggests. The challenge is to prepare for them and manage them well. Thurow urges the creation of new institutions to confront these dilemmas head on, notably the creation of a Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO) for governments and major corporations. The CKO will provide a central intelligence to steer nations and corporations through the difficulties of economic revolution. For Thurow, fortune will favor those leaders who boldly shape globalization and invest in emerging technologies. Those who stand by will be doomed to marginalization. --Patrick O'Kelley

The new global economy is linking the fortunes of every nation on every continent -- for good or for ill. Its hallmark is a rising instability and a growing inequality between the first and third worlds, in spite of rising average incomes. The United States and other first world economies are finding it hard to recover after the boom of the 1990s and the bust of the early 21st century. Financial crises in the third world come frequently and are increasingly severe. Globalization is invoked to explain riots, civil disobedience, and as a factor in the rise of terrorism.

Lester Thurow argues now is the time to shape globalization into what we want it to be -- before it's too late. Today, he explains, we are at a critical crossroads in the development of the global economy. We can sit back and let it grow as it will, or we can seize the moment and build economic systems that will minimize instability, allow second and third world countries to thrive, and protect and enhance our own American interests. In short, a win/win global economy that benefits all participants.

Globalization, says Thurow, can be shaped.

In Fortune Favors the Bold, Thurow provides an insightful analysis of the ills of globalization and, more important, offers solutions. He tackles subjects such as:

• The dangers of the burgeoning U.S. trade deficit and the falling dollar
• Solving the problem of intellectual property rights violations
• Restarting Japan's stagnating economy
• How best to help underdeveloped countries enter the global economy
• Reforming the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund

Further, Thurow shows how the economic successes of Ireland and China provide a model for other countries to follow. He even proposes creating anew role for a "Chief Knowledge Officer" to help guide companies and governments in the developing global knowledge-based economy of the 21st century.

Globalization will continue whether we like it our not. We are at a critical moment; great challenges lay ahead, and our economic future is at stake. Now, with Fortune Favors the Bold, we have a map and guidebook to a prosperous economic future.