Author: guest

Things that can’t last, don’t. Why economic change is a priority
by Simon Caulkin

Posted on guestLeave a commentPosted in 8th Global Peter Drucker Forum

Brexit and now Trump are the delayed detonations of the unexploded bombs left behind by the Great Crash of 2008-2009. It seemed clear then that the financial meltdown was the logical end-point of a fundamentally flawed version of capitalism that had for ideological reasons inverted the real order of things, placing finance and shareholders as the centre of the universe round which the productive economy revolved, and patronisingly advising everyone else to wait for the benefits to trickle down. Brexit voters and the half of Americans who are worse off than they were in 1999 – and barely better off than in 1967 – have decided the wait is over. The explosion didn’t go off […]

The Entrepreneur in the Tech Economy
by Charles-Edouard Bouée, CEO Roland Berger

Posted on guestLeave a commentPosted in 8th Global Peter Drucker Forum

There is no doubt: entrepreneurship has become ‘hip’ in almost all parts of the world. As a matter of fact, the ‘founding spirit’ went from Silicon Valley to Europe and Asia, grasping mature and emerging markets on its way. There are about 70 incubator structures in France today (10 in 2010) and nearly 50 in Germany (12 in 2010)[1]; startup funding has increased significantly in the last years (in the UK: from USD 2bn in 2013 to USD 5bn in 2015[2]). Governments and public organizations at all levels are heavily supporting the creation of new companies (from the French Tech initiative in France, to the Berlin Partner startup program in Germany, to the Creative Economy […]

Opera House: Entrepreneurial Blending
by Piero Formica

Posted on guestLeave a commentPosted in 8th Global Peter Drucker Forum

The coupling of manufacturing and culture shows how far we can advance along the road towards an entrepreneurial society.   Do manufacturing and culture live in two separate and irreconcilable worlds—manufacturing in the world of things and culture in the world of ideas? Is manufacturing called upon to solve production problems, with culture pronouncing on ‘chief systems’ as in Galileo’s ‘Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems’? This is a shared vision of those who identify manufacturing with making and culture with thinking: the manual labour of artisans and technicians as opposed to the intellectual work of professors and scientists. As a result, this fault line fails to recognize that the factory is a culture […]

THE ENTREPRENEURIAL ORGANIZATION AT SCALE
by Steve Denning

Posted on guestLeave a commentPosted in 8th Global Peter Drucker Forum

Can large organizations act entrepreneurially and innovate systematically at scale? In 2011, Ericsson (a 140-year old Swedish firm with around 100,000 employees) embraced Agile for its business in managing networks for the world’s telecommunications companies. Before 2011, Ericsson would build its systems on a five-year cycle, with a unit housing several thousand employees. When the system was finally built, it would be shipped to the telecoms and there would be an extended period of adjustment as the system was adapted to fit their needs. Now with Agile management, Ericsson has over 100 small teams working with its customers’ needs in three-week cycles. The result is faster development that is more relevant to the specific needs […]

The five principles on which we can create an entrepreneurial society
by Philippe Silberzahn

Posted on guest1 CommentPosted in 8th Global Peter Drucker Forum

As Global Peter Drucker Forum President Richard Straub wrote in a recent HBR article, between discredited financial capitalism on the one hand and ever more burdensome state bureaucracies on the other, never has the construction of an entrepreneurial society been more necessary to address the major issues faced by our societies. This call echoes Peter Drucker’s, who wrote that what we need is not just an entrepreneurial economy, but an “entrepreneurial society in which innovation and entrepreneurship are normal, steady, and continuous.” Drucker saw innovation and entrepreneurship as life-sustaining activities that should pervade organizations, the economy, and society. What is at stake, writes Straub, is “the capability to take passionate ownership of the problems we […]

An Entrepreneurial Society Needs an Entrepreneurial State
by Mariana Mazzucato

Posted on guest1 CommentPosted in 8th Global Peter Drucker Forum

Innovation-led growth can square a circle that is challenging modern capitalism: how to generate sustained and sustainable economic growth, built on high-value, well-paying jobs. This is at the core of entrepreneurial societies, and it is a good objective. The problem is how to get there. Although many countries have set the goal, few have achieved it. The reason for this elusiveness lies in widespread misunderstandings about how innovation-led growth has been achieved in the past. These misunderstandings have allowed the wrong narratives to drive policy making, with individual entrepreneurs and companies as the central characters of the story. Left unchallenged, this narrative leads to counterproductive policy making and a distribution of rewards from growth that doesn’t […]

So What Is This Entrepreneurial Society That We’re Talking About?
by Eyal Kaplan

Posted on guestLeave a commentPosted in 8th Global Peter Drucker Forum

Preparing for the Drucker Forum titled “The Entrepreneurial Society” a question arose in my mind: is an entrepreneurial society the same as entrepreneurial economy? Are we confusing the State’s role in these two? This is not a trivial question. An economic system, while certainly complex, can be steered using a relatively structured process. And individual entrepreneurs – even if governments try to depress them – will always find a way to lift their head above water and come up with a great, executable idea. The role of government through what can be called “economic policy” is pretty straightforward. To facilitate an economy where small, disruptive businesses can grow and operate side by side with large, […]

Seeding an Entrepreneurial Work Culture
by Jane McConnell

Posted on guest2 CommentsPosted in 8th Global Peter Drucker Forum

Strong, horizontal work practices go beyond the empowerment of individuals and teams. The entrepreneurial work culture is one of experimentation, creativity, and risk-taking in the belief that the outcome will be beneficial. Experimentation and creativity have long been stifled in many organizations. Command-and-control leadership, overly complex processes and slow decision-making are among the reasons for this unfortunate state. Data from my 10th annual research with 310 participants in 27 countries confirm this: 47% say their C-level managers have command-and-control leadership styles, 53% say their organizations have complicated processes, and 40% say slow decision-making is a serious concern holding back transformation initiatives. Only 37% agree that people freely challenge ideas, including the business model and work […]