Learning from the Forum
report by Drucker Challenge winner Yavnika Khanna, Capgemini

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For me, the greatest learning from Drucker’s ideas and the Forum is that it is not enough for managers and tomorrow’s leaders to recognize that the world around them in a constant state of chaos. Besides “business –as usual”, organizations today have an additional role to play in overcoming the cloud of distrust that has surrounded private sector as a response to the recent recessionary situations. In the words of Adrian Wooldridge, one of the keynote speakers at the Forum and columnist for The Economist, “we must pay heed to the warnings of the external environment”. Managers and organizations must shed managerial myopia, and as suggested by Rick Wartzman, a columnist for Forbes, resolve the […]

Peter Drucker Forum: Capitalism 2.0: new horizons for managers
by Vlatka Hlupic

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Last week I attended the Fourth Global Peter Drucker Forum, an international management conference dedicated to promote the legacy of Peter Drucker, a management professor, consultant and the world’s best known writer on management. The theme for this Forum was “Capitalism 2.0: new horizons for managers”. More than 300 participants from more than 30 countries around the world, led by some of the leading management thinkers such as Lynda Gratton, Roger Martin and Tammy Erickson, debated the future of management and capitalism. Overall consensus was that the future of re-invented management is here, the paradigm shift is unstoppable and management revolution is gradually gaining a momentum.   There is a hope that we can get out […]

Capitalism 2.0 Grapples With Youth Unemployment
by Elizabeth Haas Edersheim

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The Drucker Global Forum, held this month in Vienna, engaged more than three hundred people in envisioning Capitalism 2.0, redefining roles, responsibilities, and management to better address the 21st century. By the end, I felt more optimistic about business and social enterprises than I ever have.   We pondered the basic question that Peter Ducker often asked when he worked with managers: “What is needed?” And we took on the tougher question that Drucker used to close every conversation: “What are we going to do about it?”   What is needed?   No matter what their ages or backgrounds, participants agreed that the foremost challenge around the globe is youth unemployment.   Lynda Gratton  of the […]

Mobilizing Intelligence: Three Lessons From the Drucker Forum in Vienna
by Rick Wartzman

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During a visit last week to the place of Peter Drucker’s birth, I suddenly remembered a note that he had written shortly before his death.   I had come to Vienna to participate in the Fourth Global Peter Drucker Forum, which attracted hundreds of executives, scholars and students to contemplate what, in the aftermath of the global financial crisis and Great Recession, a better form of capitalism might look like. Much of the discussion on “Capitalism 2.0” centered, sensibly, on finding alternatives to maximizing shareholder value.   But other important threads also ran through the proceedings, including the way that information technology is reshaping all sorts of organizations. It was this particular theme that prompted […]

Why Management 2.0 Is Inevitable
by Steve Denning

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In my post, “The Revolutionary Tenets of Management 2.0”, I described five fundamental shifts that firms must master to navigate the transition to the new management ecosystem of Management 2.0.   In my TEDx talk in Oslo last month, I explained in more detail why the transition to Management 2.0 is not merely desirable: it is inevitable.   In the talk, I examine the epic shift in power in the marketplace from the seller to the buyer, that flows from Peter Drucker’s foundational insight in 1973: “There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.”   The shift in power has had devastating consequences for hierarchical bureaucracies, which have been insufficiently […]

Trust Is Dead. Long Live Trust!
by Tammy Erickson

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As business leaders pick up the post-recession pieces, I’m increasingly asked how companies can restore “trust” with employees.  My answer:  only by instituting new talent management approaches that reflect the reality of today’s relationship between employees and the corporation.   Until roughly fifty years ago, there was a tacit understanding between employees and corporations:  If employees worked hard and demonstrated loyalty to the company, the company would reward them with a steady career and comfortable retirement.  This equation had been at the heart of the relationship between individuals and organizations throughout centuries of Western economic tradition.   One side of the equation began to erode in the 1970’s as companies chipped away at the security […]

Going for good growth
by Andrew Hill

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Earlier this year I visited Patagonia, the American outerwear manufacturer, headquartered just north of Los Angeles.   Patagonia has a perverse dislike of selling more products. When at a recent strategy meeting, his executives asked founder Yvon Chouinard what he thought about their plans, he responded – according to his lieutenant Rick Ridgeway – “I’m kinda worried that you’re training all those consumers out there to buy a bunch of shit they don’t need.”   At the other extreme is Jack Welch, ex-CEO of General Electric, whose tenure was marked by GE’s uncanny ability to hit year-on-year growth targets. GE’s mantra was shareholder value: to keep investors happy, it did everything possible to meet their […]

Is a Well-Lived Life Worth Anything?
by Umair Haque

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How would you define a good life? It’s a bafflingly tough question. An even tougher one: does the economy we have today value such a life? Does it help us create one?   Here’s what I see when I look not just at the surface, but deep inside the heart of the economy today:   Instead of an “energy industry,” I see a resource addiction that saps money and preserves self-destructive expectations. I see, instead of food and education “industries,” an obesity epidemic and a debt-driven education crisis. Instead of a pharmaceutical industry, I see a new set of mental and physical discontents, like rates of suspiciously normally “abnormal” mental illnesses and drugs whose lists […]