Jim Wolfensohn, the master networker who led the World Bank into this century, lined the window of his office with silver-framed photographs of the global elite. Paul Wolfowitz, the neoconservative defence expert who succeeded him, replaced them with vicious-looking ornamental daggers from Asia. Robert Zoellick, who on Wednesday announced he will retire after a five-year stint as president, is less flashy and less bellicose; his window ledge is covered with stacks of neat manila folders and phalanxes of books. But Mr Zoellick has presided over an unheralded triumph. Quietly, the World Bank has done a power of good.

The bank under Mr Zoellick has adapted nimbly to the new world that globalisation has wreaked. The dynamism of middle-income countries, coupled with the internet, has replaced a hierarchical global order with a flat network; and the bank has understood. Where it once imposed prescriptions on the Third World, it now shares knowledge with respected clients from the new world. Where it once hoarded data, it now displays it on the web.

The old leftist tirades painted World Bankers as “Lords of Poverty” – fat-cat economists who justified austerity for poor countries with mysterious spreadsheets. The new face of the bank is the Piper PA-31 Navajo aircraft that took aerial photographs of Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. The bank immediately uploaded the photographs so that 600 engineers in 21 countries could brainstorm about the best way to rebuild Haiti’s capital. The reign of the World Bank’s in-house experts ended. Open-sourcing ruled instead.