In his book, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (1985), Peter Drucker argued that the US was experiencing “a profound shift from a ‘managerial’ to an ‘entrepreneurial’ economy.” This had been made possible by “new applications of management…and above all, to systematic innovation.”[1]   Entrepreneurial management, Drucker wrote, requires very different managerial practices including (1) focusing managerial vision on opportunity; (2) generating an entrepreneurial spirit throughout its entire management group and (3) systematic listening to and interactions with the staff.[2]   “Today’s businesses, especially the large ones,” Drucker wrote in 1985, “simply will not survive in this period of rapid change and innovation unless they acquire entrepreneurial competence….Existing businesses will need to change, and change greatly in any […]

“The world,” writes Alan Murray in Fortune, “is in the midst of a new industrial revolution.” The “frictionless corporation” of the 21st Century is “driven by technology that is connecting everyone and everything, everywhere and all the time.”   What then are the management practices of “the frictionless corporation” that enable “labor, information, and money move easily, cheaply, and almost instantly”?   Over the last year, a group of companies interested in finding out joined together to form a Learning Consortium for the Creative Economy, sponsored by Scrum Alliance, a membership association of more than 400,000 members with the mission of transforming the world of work.   Following nine site visits conducted during the summer […]

The humanist strand of management thinking that celebrates teams and collaboration through respect for customers and workers as human beings has a long and distinguished history. It includes Mary Parker Follett (1920s), Elton Mayo and Chester Barnard (1930s), Abraham Maslow (1940s), Douglas McGregor (1960s), Peter Drucker (1970s), Peters and Waterman (1980s), Katzenbach and Smith (1990s), and Gary Hamel (2000s).   Yet despite almost a century of fine management writing and many successful initiatives, the ugly truth is that the lasting impact on general management practice has been limited. Even humanist change initiatives that were dramatically successful by objectively measured standards have often been discarded by the firms that introduced them. Sooner or later, firms revert […]