As a co-founder of the Open Innovation Strategy and Policy Group I remember well the days when we had great difficulty to make ourselves understood. What is open innovation all about and why should anybody care? Some may even have thought that it might just be another buzz-word and management fad  -  we have indeed seen a lot of those passing by. Today, five years on we know  better.   What started as a small creek, invisible to most has become a powerful torrent. This is not just wishful thinking 

“We are at the beginning of a period of extreme flux, of extreme change and great competitive pressure in which traditional ways of doing things, traditional products, traditional processes will be challenged on all sides.”   When Peter Drucker uttered these words to a group of IBM executives, new complexities were tripping up the world. It was 1955.   In the more than half a century since, of course, the level of complexity has only increased across all of our institutions – political, economic and social. Indeed, as we move

Propelled by advances in global communication and information technologies, there has been an explosion in interactions in the business-civic-social-natural system. These interactions are among both human and nonhuman entities (e.g., devices) in the system and entail the following five key characteristics of complexity: 1. An increase in the number of entities interacting in the system. 2. An increase in the diversity of entities in the system. 3. An increase in the interdependence of entities in the system, with each entity affecting and being affected by the actions of other entities

Held in Vienna, Austria, between the 15th and 16th of November 2012, the Global Peter Drucker Forum explored in detail the system of capitalism. Moreover, the focal question was whether or not maximization of shareholder value should be the primary concern of a business. Two members of the ThinkYoung team attended the conference to offer a youthful insight to a setting one would assume to be habitually dominated by seasoned representatives of multinationals.   Richard Straub, President of the Peter Drucker Society Europe, referred to the participants of the conference

Denmark’s Vestas Wind Systems is a world leader within the global wind turbine industry. But after 2008 Vestas has experienced a near death experience and is struggling for survival.  It is argued that had Vestas paid attention to what the management guru Peter Drucker labeled the five deadly business sins Vestas might have avoided getting into dire straits.   According to Drucker the five deadline business sins are applied to Vestas in this article and as follows.    1. The first and easily the most common sin is the worship of

Over two and a half millennia ago, Greek philosophers gave us the “dialectical” method of constructive argument. In the 21st century democracy is faced with significant challenges, and moving forward may require searching for solutions from the wisdom of democracy’s inventors.   The dialectic method is a form of reasoning based on dialogue of arguments and counter-arguments, advocating propositions (theses) and counter-propositions (anti-theses). The dialectical method of dialogue is unique and different from rhetoric and debate in that it aims to converge the opposite points of view and form a new and superior

I was first introduced to Peter Drucker – and to the broader management discipline in general – through my entry to the inaugural Drucker Challenge in 2010 and subsequent participation at the Drucker Forum in Vienna that year. At the time I had been working on a poverty reduction programme in Bangladesh, and since my work has taken me to a variety of international contexts to engage with a variety of complex social problems. Each problem needs a different solution, and each solution requires a different approach. However, one managerial

I returned over the weekend from the Drucker Forum in Vienna. It was a great conference! From my ecological perspective it was an “open patch”, a place in which people with many different backgrounds and perspectives can gather, have an open dialogue and exchange questions and answers. This is the “soil” in which new ideas of all kinds can grow without being crushed by giant orthodoxies.   On the first evening – a cocktail party for speakers and essay-winners – I introduced myself to a man standing alone. I noticed

Vienna November 2012, Palace Ferstel, in the grand settings of the Palace, memories of Menger, Hayek, Freud and Kohr laced with Elizabeth Of Austria presence are lingering. Mitteleuropa no more…or actually more than ever? This is the gala dinner of the 4th Peter Drucker Forum, the Austrian- born writer, teacher and consultant, who was once tagged as “the Man who invented management.” He liked to call himself a “social ecologist” – i.e. someone who deals with the man-made social environment in which we operate.   For two days last week,

For me, the greatest learning from Drucker’s ideas and the Forum is that it is not enough for managers and tomorrow’s leaders to recognize that the world around them in a constant state of chaos. Besides “business –as usual”, organizations today have an additional role to play in overcoming the cloud of distrust that has surrounded private sector as a response to the recent recessionary situations. In the words of Adrian Wooldridge, one of the keynote speakers at the Forum and columnist for The Economist, “we must pay heed to