Royal Dutch Shell is one of the world's largest and most powerful companies. Bolivia is one of the planet's poorest countries; its gross domestic product is a mere 3 per cent of Shell's annual revenues. Recently, Shell chief executive Jeroen van der Veer noted, somewhat meekly, that his company was resigned to accepting Bolivia's decision to break the contracts it had signed. He said it was no longer a good idea for oil companies to put up a legal fight against the nationalistic policies of countries such as Bolivia. Once upon a time, giant multinationals did not bend to the will of tiny governments. The behemoths of industry did not just stand by as their oil, gas or mining fields were seized under a national banner. They fought back and not just rhetorically.

In Iraq, a ragtag militia equipped with small arms and improvised explosive devices is denying the most powerful military in history - the US - control of the territory it swiftly conquered. This same pattern, in which "micropowers" are successfully contesting the dominion of traditional "megaplayers", is also in evidence in a far more cerebral market: encyclopedias. The survival of the world's oldest and most respected source of information, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, is threatened by strange newcomers. One of them, Wikipedia, though just five years old, is already 12 times larger than Britannica, which was first published in 1768. Wikipedia is free, exists only on the web, can be read in 229 languages and is expanded daily by unpaid volunteers. A recent study in Nature magazine found that, despite its far larger size, Wikipedia had 162 errors, while Britannica had 123.