Year: 2018

Finding Purpose in our Collective Ingenuity
by Ron Carucci

Posted on guestLeave a commentPosted in 10th Global Peter Drucker Forum

Peter Drucker spent his career finding ways to maximize human endeavor. He was both fascinated and propelled by what humans could do collectively at scale. He wanted us to be as efficient as possible. He also wanted management to lead in ways that made people as gratified by their contributions as possible. As he curated management through technological advances, he was cautious about relying too heavily on machines as surrogates for humans. He’s known for saying, “The computer is a moron.” My hunch is that he meant nothing can replace the fired-up soul of humans pursuing the greatness within them. Today, the tensions between human and technical ingenuity are tightening as the lines between them […]

Inclining towards ‘Human’agement
by Namita Gupta-Hehl

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Ever wondered why the emotional dimensions find their place in the apex of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? It is indeed a reiteration of the ‘human’ aspect. ‘People’ form the axis of a business around which the processes and profits revolve. To spell success, a product must be customer-centric, and a software application must be user-centric. No wonder ‘Human-centric’ strategies and methodologies work wonders time and again. Not to forget, these strategies have an underlying ingredient – emotions. Defining Emotions in Business “Are emotions detrimental to a business?” If frustration and dissatisfaction are the widespread emotions in a business, then that statement holds good. Emotions are an indispensable part of a business. How would business advertisements and […]

Artificial Intelligence: The Long-Term Human Factor
by Thomas Klaus

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Why we shouldn’t be concerned about the ‘AI takeover ‘ The Threat Artificial intelligence (AI) is in the headlines almost daily, nearly always in alarming form. Will AI eat my job? What will happen if and when it is used for military purposes? What do we make of the assertion of the late Stephen Hawking, later supported by Bill Gates, Elon Musk and others, that ‘the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race’?1 When researchers are asked about the risks of an ‘AI takeover’, most answer that the technology is not currently powerful enough to compete with human intelligence or is missing important aspects of autonomous intelligence. Although this […]

The Death of the Manager: The Rise of the Enabler
by Nick Hixson

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Management is about controlling, administering, and planning. It is a centuries old discipline derived from the need to control a predictable process based on production where the parameters of the market and environment move slowly. It came to its peak in the last century with the rise of the machine. Machines fed the management mindset of control and predictability, and most fluctuations in desired results were put down to the problem of having to employ people to operate the machines. People are not machines Huge amounts of effort have been expended in trying to control the unpredictability of people and make them more like machines. Latterly, there has been a realisation that people don’t function […]

Technology Will Make Us Human Again
by John Hagel

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As technology transforms our economy, one trend is getting more and more attention: the prospect that it will increasingly automate the work that we human beings do. And it’s not just low skilled, manual labor that’s at risk – “knowledge” work like operational analytics and marketing is also being taken over by sophisticated artificial intelligence algorithms. But other changes are also afoot, changes that could allow the human dimension of work to become more important. While it’s true that technology is taking over routine tasks from many workers, it is also reshaping many supply and demand trends that drive our global markets. It’s this second technology-driven shift that can prevent automation from eliminating jobs; but […]

Innovation: shifting the balance of power
by Marc Wagner

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Few topics currently arouse such intensive discussion as the innovative capacity of German companies. It seems that likely nations such as the US, and China in particular, will overtake us when it comes to developing new (digital) business models that can be scaled globally and use network effects to generate extraordinary growth figures and valuations at speed. While China is producing powerhouses in companies such as Haier or Alibaba, has Germany lost the “entrepreneurial gene”? To find out, together with TU Munich we carried out a joint study looking at the innovation culture of German corporations and the challenges it faces. Here are some of the main findings, presented here as a stimulus to further […]

Management – the human dimension
Stefan Stern

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Management, Peter Drucker famously said, is a liberal art. It may be informed by data and enhanced by technology. But it remains an art, not a science, and one practised by people, not machines. Do you want to be managed by an algorithm or a “platform”? Me neither. But, you may object, this is sentimental and out of date. Computer code already influences our lives in all sorts of unseen ways, nudging us into purchasing decisions and co-ordinating our customer experiences. Apps make things happen. They connect passengers with available taxi drivers, or instruct delivery drivers and couriers to bring goods to our offices or our homes. Sophisticated and productive factories and “fulfillment centres” operate […]

Three Principles to Bring the Best New Ideas to Life
Philip Black

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If someone in your organization has a great idea today, how long will it take for your customers to know about or benefit from that idea? For many companies, the answer is far too long. The pressure to bring new ideas to market faster has typically rested on the shoulders of product development, but it’s also moved to the boardroom, where CEOs are being asked to push for scale and make concepts like Agile work throughout the company. Agile was designed specifically to address this need for flexibility and speed. The Agile Manifesto was conceived as a set of 12 principles to guide improvements to software development, and each one is useful and relevant, and […]