Author: guest

It’s too complex!
by G. Koch

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I can’t remember any conference which I attended in the last few years where at least in one major speech the subject of complexity was not prominently addressed. There is no longer any discussion on the future of society, economy, finances, education or science in which the contributors do not admit that the interrelationships and dependencies have developed towards a size, a level of opacity and multi-dimensionality which can only be characterized as complex – not just complicated. Being complicated is not being complex; it means that a certain effort is needed to solve a problem, but it is manageable anyway. Not so a complex problem.   Everybody knows what complexity is because everybody has […]

Embracing Co-Creation to Manage Complexity and Revitalize Value Creation by Venkat Ramaswamy

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Propelled by advances in global communication and information technologies, there has been an explosion in interactions in the business-civic-social-natural system. These interactions are among both human and nonhuman entities (e.g., devices) in the system and entail the following five key characteristics of complexity: 1. An increase in the number of entities interacting in the system. 2. An increase in the diversity of entities in the system. 3. An increase in the interdependence of entities in the system, with each entity affecting and being affected by the actions of other entities in the system. 4. An increase in the unpredictability of actions and events in the system. 5. An increase in the variability of potential outcomes […]

Global Peter Drucker Forum 2012 – Think Young Article by Alexander Brown

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Held in Vienna, Austria, between the 15th and 16th of November 2012, the Global Peter Drucker Forum explored in detail the system of capitalism. Moreover, the focal question was whether or not maximization of shareholder value should be the primary concern of a business. Two members of the ThinkYoung team attended the conference to offer a youthful insight to a setting one would assume to be habitually dominated by seasoned representatives of multinationals.   Richard Straub, President of the Peter Drucker Society Europe, referred to the participants of the conference as essential components in an engine of change, driving towards new and better horizons, both socially and economically. He later quoted Winston Churchill in his […]

The Case of Vestas Wind Systems and Peter Drucker’s five deadly sins of business by Jørn Bang Andersen

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Denmark’s Vestas Wind Systems is a world leader within the global wind turbine industry. But after 2008 Vestas has experienced a near death experience and is struggling for survival.  It is argued that had Vestas paid attention to what the management guru Peter Drucker labeled the five deadly business sins Vestas might have avoided getting into dire straits.   According to Drucker the five deadline business sins are applied to Vestas in this article and as follows.    1. The first and easily the most common sin is the worship of high profit margins and of “premium pricing. (Peter Drucker)   The financial targets for Vestas’No.1 in Modern Energy strategy were defined October 2009, as Triple […]

Democracy full circle: its invention may hold the key to its future
by Liviu Nedelescu

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Over two and a half millennia ago, Greek philosophers gave us the “dialectical” method of constructive argument. In the 21st century democracy is faced with significant challenges, and moving forward may require searching for solutions from the wisdom of democracy’s inventors.   The dialectic method is a form of reasoning based on dialogue of arguments and counter-arguments, advocating propositions (theses) and counter-propositions (anti-theses). The dialectical method of dialogue is unique and different from rhetoric and debate in that it aims to converge the opposite points of view and form a new and superior point of view from the synthesis of the initial arguments. This transcendence is possible by searching for commonalities between the two opposing points of view when considered […]

Bottom-up management and the reintegration of former child soldiers: a profile of the Grassroots Reconciliation Group
By Christopher Maclay

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I was first introduced to Peter Drucker – and to the broader management discipline in general – through my entry to the inaugural Drucker Challenge in 2010 and subsequent participation at the Drucker Forum in Vienna that year. At the time I had been working on a poverty reduction programme in Bangladesh, and since my work has taken me to a variety of international contexts to engage with a variety of complex social problems. Each problem needs a different solution, and each solution requires a different approach. However, one managerial principle lies at the centre of any effective initiative in this field: participation.   In The Practice of Management, Drucker explained that, ‘A decision should […]

The 2012 Drucker Forum – Never Stop Playing
David Hurst

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I returned over the weekend from the Drucker Forum in Vienna. It was a great conference! From my ecological perspective it was an “open patch”, a place in which people with many different backgrounds and perspectives can gather, have an open dialogue and exchange questions and answers. This is the “soil” in which new ideas of all kinds can grow without being crushed by giant orthodoxies.   On the first evening – a cocktail party for speakers and essay-winners – I introduced myself to a man standing alone. I noticed that he had a tiny gold medal pinned in his lapel. He was Dan Schechtman, winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize for Chemistry, and a pioneer […]

Capitalism 2.0 Is Coming
by Marianne Abib-Pech

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Vienna November 2012, Palace Ferstel, in the grand settings of the Palace, memories of Menger, Hayek, Freud and Kohr laced with Elizabeth Of Austria presence are lingering. Mitteleuropa no more…or actually more than ever? This is the gala dinner of the 4th Peter Drucker Forum, the Austrian- born writer, teacher and consultant, who was once tagged as “the Man who invented management.” He liked to call himself a “social ecologist” – i.e. someone who deals with the man-made social environment in which we operate.   For two days last week, an eclectic mix of close to three hundred corporate executive, entrepreneurs and prominent members of Academia from all over the world gathered at the heart […]