Category: 7th Global Peter Drucker Forum

Let’s get the future right this time
by Vlatka Hlupic

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Those who like to make projections about the future tend to be those with the deepest knowledge of fledgling technology. In the current context, this means projecting how Artificial Intelligence, Big Data – gathering systematic intelligence of habits and preferences as employees and customers – and 3D Printing are set to transform many industries and lifestyles. Such futurists like to project a geek’s paradise of an information-rich, automated world of smart cars, smart buildings and bespoke manufacturing.   But has futurism been here before? In the 1950s and 1960s in western Europe, there were projections of what the world would look like by the Year 2000 (remember that?), and plans based on such projections were […]

The Seductions of the Infosphere
by Charles Handy

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Luciano Floridi calls it the infosphere, the combination of the internet and computer technology that is revolutionizing our lives and work.  Floridi carries the intriguing title of Professor of the Philosophy and Ethics of information at the University of Oxford; intriguing because it suggests that the revolution is as much about issues of morality, identity and meaning as it is about technology and what the new infosphere can do, both for us and to us.   The infosphere is an exciting prospect, one that offers a myriad of new prospects for wealth and work creation, most of them as yet undiscovered.  The alluring idea of better lives for all is not inconceivable.  But there are […]

The Oscillation Principle
by Nancy Dixon

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In 2013 the CEO of Yahoo, Marissa Meyer, told workers they could no longer work at home.   She said that communication and collaboration was important, and that speed and quality was often sacrificed when working at home, to be the best Yahoo! meant being physically together.   Marissa’s reasoning was sound, her solution was flawed. It is neither wise nor effective to turn our backs on the benefits that a virtual work force brings. But it is also true that in this increasingly digital age we have lost something that is needed to make organizations both humane and effective places to work. What has been lost are the relationships and sense of purpose that […]

Imagining a High- Touch/ High- Tech Future
by Yavnika Khanna

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The internet is a wild place to search for the questions that occupy the world’s greatest minds. I read the conversation between Daniel Kahneman and Yuval Noah Harari. They discuss how the experiences of being human, being intelligent and being conscious have changed with the dominance of technology in our lives. The quality and content of the discourse reminded me of the theme of the 7th Peter Drucker Forum.  We are riding on the wave of perpetual technical transformation. Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, the Internet of Things, 3-D printing and digitalization of enterprises on the cloud are the determinants of the economic outlook in the near future. The idea of economies and societies built primarily […]

Managing Engagement in the Digital Age
by Walt McFarland

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The technological advances of the digital age seem tailor made for enabling an engaged and high performing global workforce.  One reason is that emerging technologies can actively support key human development needs.  For example, adult learning experts tell us that great human development is social, collaborative, immediately relevant, and self-directed—all features that can be enhanced by today’s technology.   In the digital age, members of the global workforce have the capability to be more connected, more collaborative, and have greater personal impact than ever before. More knowledge is immediately available to them—in more delivery choices—than at any time in history. Clearly, the digital age is creating a workplace optimized for high levels of workforce engagement. […]

The Quantified Organisation: people-powered digital transformation
by Lee Bryant

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When we first started trying to ‘humanise the enterprise’ using social tools to improve the way firms coordinate work, back in 2003, we believed that just by giving employees the means to connect, collaborate and communicate more freely, we would help firms evolve towards more agile, responsive organisations. But after a decade of helping organisations develop social and collaboration strategies and platforms, the limits of this approach are clear. Cross-cutting networks can achieve a lot, even in firms where power flows orthogonally down the management hierarchy, but to really change the way we work, we need to focus on developing the new organisational capabilities that digital technology has made possible – what I think of […]

Extending Moore’s Law to Claiming Our Humanity
by Johan Roos

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Almost daily, advances in STEM subjects capture our admiration and awe for what humanity can accomplish. Higg’s “God particle” is finally discovered; a microchip the size of a finger nail can contain several billion transistors and other electronics; architects can design buildings one-half mile high; one-atom thick “graphene,” the thinnest yet strongest material ever discovered, paves the way for bionic devices connected directly to neurons; entirely new organisms with DNA sequences created on a computer are used to produce food. These accomplishments and the associated “politico-academic” rhetoric about education and research around the globe give us the impression that the future of the world is dependent on the progress of everything STEM.   But it […]

Plenty of Room at the Top: the case for a viable man-machine economic future
by Liviu Nedelescu

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In his famous “Plenty of Room at the Bottom” lecture, the physicist Richard Feynman arguably seeded the concept of nanotechnology.  While there is technical debate on Feynman’s actual role in catalyzing specific nanotechnology research, his more general point as implied in the title of the lecture is clear: there is no reason we should overcrowd in selective pursuits, intellectual or otherwise.   Almost six decades later, we appear to be doing just what Feynman implicitly cautioned against. We are cornering ourselves in the narrow view that crowds man and machine onto the same tasks. The latest witch hunt is underway and gaining momentum. The witches are the rapid innovation in robotics and computing, slated to […]