The Internet bubble of 2000 spawned a long list of online ventures that promised to redefine commercial and residential brokerage, replace the appraiser and level the playing field. It was exciting times charting a new course in the real estate industry. Yahoo was still the preferred search engine, and Google was just emerging. Then it all went bust.

Fast forward, last week the Wall Street Journal ran an article that the most amazing company of the last decade, Google, is mapping the favelas—Brazil's down-trodden neighborhoods—with the expectation that exposure to these backward communities, before long, will cause them to emerge from crime and disorder, and translate into economic opportunity. Layer on this story the even more remarkable saga of Alibaba and its NYSE IPO, and the likelihood that the Chinese platform, now an NYSE public company, will reshape consumer commerce between the U.S. and China.

I could go on with some of the amazing things that are emerging, but the list is too long. What I do know is that along with these groundbreaking changes will come a new breed of executive who will be equipped to deal with the resulting seismic changes in the business landscape.