Talent is to a knowledge-based economy what oil and steel were to an industrial-based one—it’s most important asset. And while agglomeration was important in the past too, it pales in comparison to the type of economic concentration we see playing out right now in major cities across the globe—talent wants to be around other talent. In fact it needs to be.

For decades, the United States has been the world’s biggest beneficiary of global talent flows by a long shot. But the United States risks squandering its long-held gift of global talent, due to changing economic conditions abroad and series of missteps at home. That’s the main message of an excellent new book from Bill Kerr of the Harvard Business School: The Gift of Global Talent: How Migration Shapes Business, Economy & Society.