What it shows is a world in which the fastest-growing forms of interconnection are not the ones that fit a lot of those preconceptions.

Image A worker in China moving scarves this week in preparation for sales tied to the World Cup in Brazil starting in June. This is an image many people have of global trade, but it's an incomplete one. Credit... Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

“We focus a lot on the cheap goods from Vietnam and Bangladesh going to Walmart,” said Susan Lund, one of the authors. “In fact, the growing and larger share of global trade right now is about knowledge-intensive goods and services.”

That insight by itself isn’t particularly new, of course. People who study international economics and globalization have noted the shift for many years. The McKinsey study, though, adds some useful approaches to quantifying the ways it now occurs.

Economists have a habit of looking at the world in terms of aggregates. The trade deficit numbers that the United States government releases each month treat an American company buying engineering services from a French consulting firm the same as it does an American buying a bottle of French wine. But the impact on the economy and society is very different — the wine represents a story of simple commercial transactions in which people in one country buy goods and services from people in another.

But it is those complex, long-lasting and knowledge-intensive forms of international connection, like the engineering example, that are increasing the fastest.