Year: 2016

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 […]

6 Signs You’re Living in an Entrepreneurial Society
by Efosa Ojomo

Posted on guest1 CommentPosted in 8th Global Peter Drucker Forum

In his landmark 1985 book, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, famed author and educator Peter Drucker wrote about an entrepreneurial society and its impact on economic development. “Entrepreneurship rests on a theory of economy and society,” he wrote. “The theory sees change as normal and indeed as healthy. And it sees the major task in society — and especially in the economy — as doing something different rather than doing better what is already being done.” What does it mean, then, to live in a society that is becoming more entrepreneurial? I see six major signs: 1. Innovation precedes regulation, not the other way around. In entrepreneurial societies, innovation always precedes regulation. In the United States, for instance, scientists and engineers in Silicon […]

Why Peter Drucker’s Writing Still Feels So Relevant
by Hermann Simon

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

In an era of rapid technological and social change, in which new management jargons seem to rise even faster than the disruptive startups that coin them, the career of Peter Drucker is perhaps as instructive as his writings themselves. Why do his writings remain so fresh and vibrant today? How did he avoid both authoring passing fads and jumping on others’ bandwagons? For one thing, he was a citizen of the world. Drucker himself lived in Austria, Germany, England, and eventually the United States. The upper middle classes of turn-of-the-century Vienna emphasized education, culture, art, music, historical consciousness, urbanity, and international openness, and Drucker learned from an astonishing array of his contemporaries — in his memoirs, […]

Startup Europe
by Nicolai Strøm-Olsen & Hermund Haaland

Posted on guest1 CommentPosted in 8th Global Peter Drucker Forum

Some European countries are becoming more entrepreneurial, but it is not without challenges. Europe needs to build better global ecosystems for entrepreneurship if we are to make the shift into a truly entrepreneurial society.   In Tallinn young people take part in a technological boom that has made Estonia the European country with the highest number of entrepreneurs per capita. Estonia is one of the few European countries that have transformed parts of its economy into a more entrepreneurial one, and it is starting to pay off. According to French economists at CEPII (Centre d’Etudes Prospective et d’Informations Internationales) Estonia will reach to the same level of living standard as the Nordic countries in only […]