Trans-managerialism breaks down fences that confine innovation
by Piero Formica

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There is a painting by the German painter Peter von Cornelius (1784-1867) in which one sees Gunther, King of Burgundy, ordering Hagen, a Burgundian warrior, to sink the treasure of the Nibelung. Siegfried, the visionary innovator, will win the Nibelung treasure. Akin to the mythological lineage of the Nibelung, managers hold the vast treasure that consists of customers and consumers. As with Siegfried, visionary innovators will win it. But the past is hard to kill, for the visionaries first appear with products and services that initially look like ugly ducklings. In addition to technological failures, the first steamboats were clumsy and even dangerous, while evolutionary technologies made sailing boats increasingly beautiful and more performing. The […]

The New Imperative: Creating Value for Society, not just Shareholders
Anne Bahr Thompson

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Today, it’s a given that that the playing field for business has changed. Technology and communications are continuously advancing. Dramatic sociopolitical events continue to occur at an accelerating pace. Global leaders have acknowledged that the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) cannot be met without private sector involvement. And people’s definitions of value are shifting alongside mounting evidence that social and environmental practices impact corporate performance over the long-term. There is no going back. The mantra that has defined our economy and our notions of capitalism for decades – the primary purpose of a corporation is to maximize profits and shareholder value – no longer speaks to the needs and practical realities of our modern society. […]

Finding Purpose in our Collective Ingenuity
by Ron Carucci

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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 […]