WHEN I was growing up in Los Angeles in the 1960s, I spent a lot of time outdoors near our house, riding my bike and catching snakes by Bull Creek. My universe was small - school, the creek, my father's shoe store - and not just because I was 12 years old. By almost any measure, the world itself was far less complex and interconnected.

At that time, aspects of connectivity that we take for granted today were either exorbitantly expensive or in their infancy. A five-minute call from New York to London cost more than US$20 in today's money. Shipping containers, now a pillar of global trade, were barely a decade old. Computers were the size of an entire room - they didn't sit in the palm of your hand and they certainly didn't have conversations with you.

Over the next several decades, technological innovation and globalisation transformed the world into a more connected, more demanding, and - for hundreds of millions of people - a healthier and more prosperous place. The combination of these two forces has created opportunities we could barely have imagined 50 years ago. Such change is an essential component of human history and the most successful nations moving forward will be those that prepare for transformation by improving education, supporting innovation and building 21st century infrastructure.