Everyone agrees that the global economy is flying through a patch of extreme turbulence. Recall that Lehman Brothers, which was founded in 1850, successfully weathered the American Civil War, multiple recessions, four financial panics, two world wars, depressions, oil crises, and 9/11. But the storied firm could not survive the seizure of global capital markets in 2008.

The present economic crisis has been so dramatic, that many people think it caused the volatility roiling markets. If the crisis triggered turbulence, according to this line of thinking, then the global economy should return to a period of stability once the worst of the downturn is behind us. Not so fast. Turbulence did not begin on September 9th, 2008. And it will not end when the global economy pulls out of recession. The current economic crisis is not the cause of market turbulence, it is simply the latest symptom of the volatility inherent in global markets.

In January of 2000, I stepped into “the pit” to teach my first class on entrepreneurial management at the Harvard Business School. These were heady days for aspiring entrepreneurs. Some MBA students raised tens of millions of dollars with little more than a business plan. A few recent graduates had founded Internet start-ups and measured their net worth in hundreds of millions of dollars (on paper at least). Some venture capitalists prowled the student haunts hoping to discover the founder of the next amazon or eBay.

My most vivid memory of the dot.com boom is not excitement, but surprise. I was surprised when the