Finally, information technology remains a powerful, transforming force, a jolt of digital energy that alters every piece of work and business that it touches. To be sure, technology can move faster than the human capacity to absorb it; investments in new technologies often go beyond the capacity of companies to profit from them. But networked digital technologies are an enabling platform that unleashes all kinds of possibilities in the ways work can be structured, companies can be operated, and the future can be created.

Individual opportunity. Disruptive innovation. Information technology. These forces apply equally to companies of all sizes, of all ages, in all industries. They are everywhere about us, and they continue to reinvent, reenergize, and redirect everything about business, work, leadership, and success. They are the ideas that animate the new economy.

Second, The Questions

Of course, ideas are only as powerful as the data that supports them. Anyone looking for hard evidence of the breadth and depth of business transformation need only pick up As the Future Catches You: How Genomics and Other Forces Are Changing Your Life, Work, Health, and Wealth (Crown Business) , by the brilliant Harvard University researcher and writer Juan Enriquez. Enriquez's just-published book is a statistical guide to the new economy, the equivalent of an unofficial Congressional Budget Office report on the rapidly changing, rapidly emerging world of an economy powered by knowledge, altered by genetics, transformed by computing, and shaped by geopolitics. We have included some of Enriquez's telling data points below.

Because we believe, as Enriquez does, that the new economy continues to unleash remarkable innovations and dramatic changes in business strategy, economic competition, work, and life, we dispatched four of our most talented writers to collect answers to the four essential questions that box the compass of the new economy today:

Who Has the Next Big Idea? We live in an economy that is defined by ideas. The capacity to outthink the competition, to convert knowledge to power and smarts to money, defines the shift from an economy of tangibles to one of intangibles. According to contributing editor Dan Pink, the next big idea is coming from Michael Hammer, who has already unleashed one big idea on an unsuspecting business world -- he's the godfather of business-process reengineering -- and who has a whole new take on what comes next.

What is the New Economics? The way we talk about the new economy is, in fact, more about business than economics. But in the halls of Yale University, Robert J. Shiller, economist par excellence, author of Irrational Exuberance, and himself a dotcom entrepreneur, is hard at work revising the conventional wisdom about "the laws of economics," as contributing editor John Ellis discovered. What if human psychology was more powerful than rational expectations?

Where is the Next Frontier of Innovation? With Silicon Valley in disarray, it would be easy to conclude that the technological principles that drove the new economy are in retreat. In fact, the new economy's innovation paradigm is transforming many fields of human endeavor beyond business. Senior writer Fara Warner explores the depths of the ocean -- the place where life began -- with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute to find out how digital transformation may shape life in the future.

How Do Fast Companies Work Now? The signature innovation of the new economy is the "fast company" -- an organization that creates value by embracing change and innovation. In recent years, in the popular imagination, fast companies became synonymous with high-tech startups -- young organizations that were built on speed. According to senior editor Keith Hammonds, a new generation of fast companies will be built on momentum: speed times mass. His report on iFormation Group, which is a remarkable collaboration between Goldman Sachs, the Boston Consulting Group, and General Atlantic Partners, shows that there's real power in being a hybrid of large, strong, traditional businesses and nimble, agile, Webified operations.

New ideas, new economics, new innovations, new companies: These are the lifeblood of the new economy. Far from over, far from reversing fields, far from being ambiguous, the new economy continues to bring change, opportunity, and challenge to the business world and the workplace.

Question: Is the new economy over?

Answer: You gotta be kidding!

Sidebar: Data Points

Data Point #1
Fast Innovation

It took the telephone 35 years to get into 25% of all homes in the United States. It took TV 26 years. It took radio 22 years. It took PCs 16 years. It took the Internet 7 years.