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The staggering talent gap faced by the US and other industrial countries is a far more fundamental demographic shift than most companies yet realize. As we report in the essay "Caught in the Quagmire," when it comes to knowledge workers, no amount of salary and benefits, distance-learning programs or international office openings will change the fact that companies are preparing to battle for employees who simply won't exist.

In "All Companies Are Left Behind," we show how the US is losing its decades-long knowledge advantage, crystallized most clearly in the sciences, where the US lags other developed nations in graduation rates. In the race for talent in top management, the desire for the best possible leaders has trumped recent efforts to rein in executive pay. As we report in "The Gold Standard in CEO Pay," the median pay of US CEOs at the 500 largest companies rose to $8.8 million in 2007-and the trend seems likely to continue, as big organizations managing more and more assets globally, find that there's simply too much at stake to settle for less than the best. As Asian countries continue to move toward free markets, they will look to the US for a compensation model, because they want American-style innovation.

And one of the signature themes of that management style has been collaboration. Indeed, as we report in "The New Global Citizens," the challenges to maintaining global growth have simply become too great for any single executive or company to manage independently. Collaborative partnerships-joint ventures and public-private initiatives-are allowing global players to increase growth in developing countries, while spreading risk. And development opportunities, as we explain in "Collaboration Begins at Home" may be much closer than you think.

Along with collaborative networks and other models of shared success has also emerged the idea of sustainable business practices. As we write in "Surprise! Sustainability Makes Business Sense," companies around the globe have found that sustainable practices can deliver both cost savings and operational improvements.