This is the full text of the opening keynote by Prof. Helga Nowotny at the 5th Global Peter Drucker Forum.   1.   The embarrassment of complexity begins when we realize that old structures are no longer adequate and the new ones are not yet in place. Currently we are in a transition phase. The old never yields to the new in one precise moment in time and this is what makes transition phases exciting, risky – and sometimes embarrassing.   The sheer multiplication of networks of various kinds and

 I am honoured to have been invited to address this opening session. The subject that you are going to discuss during the next two days is not an easy one and the Organisers are to be complimented that they have succeeded in putting a program together that has attracted so many participants from different walks of life and of such diverse experience. Such a varied group of participants should help to ensure that at the end of the conference we will know what we are really talking about and what

Welcome to all of you to the 5 th Global Peter Drucker Forum  – welcome to you here in the auditorium and welcome to all those on our live stream. In addition to the 350 present in the auditorium we have some 1000 participants registered for the live stream.   It is with quite some emotion that I am addressing you – almost by the day 5 years ago we began something which we hoped would become a journey – exactly in this place. Today I can confirm that the

Presentation to the 5th Global Drucker Forum 2013   The complex and ambiguous conditions of this century are unlikely to respond to the old school of leadership. Old norms were honed in a different environment – one in which it was perhaps easier to view one position as right and the other wrong, easier to predict, to forecast, to control.  But despite today’s complexities, many notions of leadership remain deeply embedded in the conditions and assumptions of the last century.   What perspectives and skills are needed to lead organizations

  Transcript: Good morning. And greetings to all of you. I am honored by your invitation to present some ideas related to the theme of this year’s Drucker Forum, “Managing Complexity.” However, when I was approached and asked to talk to you, my first thought was:   How can I possibly add anything to a Forum featuring so many worldwide experts on the subject? Then, on second thought, it occurred to me that we are missing one big ingredient in our increasingly complex world: leadership. More and more, we are

Resilience will receive a lot of attention as the complexity of our world increases. Below is a brief description of the logical correspondence between complexity and resilience, followed by a succinct primer on mechanisms of resilience. But first, a bit of history is in order.   Before the Industrial Revolution reliability wasn’t a granted thing. The whole concept of craftsmanship was intrinsically tied to the idea that the quality of the output varied widely with each individual. This lack of uniform standards meant that the benefits of scale economies were

Or Be Like the Borg Collective and eliminate viruses   Organizations around the globe in all sectors continue a trend of increasing size and complexity that began over 100 years ago with the business strategies of the likes of Carnegie and Rockefeller. New and emerging technologies for communication and data sharing have accelerated this process in recent decades. We view this process as a natural and inevitable occurrence due, if for no other reason, to simple economics. Expenses will rise through time in many ways that management cannot prevent no

The business news continues to be full of stories of large companies getting into trouble in part because of their complexity. JP Morgan has been getting most of the headlines, but many other banks are also investigation, and companies from other sectors, from Siemens to GSK to Sony, are all under fire.   It goes without saying that big companies are complex. And it is also pretty obvious that their complexity is a double-edged sword. Companies are complex by design because it allows them to do difficult things. IBM has

Design in the 21st century is grappling with a crisis of identity. Despite the unprecedented popularity of design thinking within contemporary business and society design as a practice is being challenged by many of the same disruptions affecting every aspect of modern life. In short, design is struggling to deal with complexity.   While the process of design was not codified until the 1960’s through the work of Herbert Simon and others, the act of design is as old as humanity. Each and every stone-age axe was designed. Carefully honed

J. Birkinshaw, S. Denning, T. Roy and V. Hlupic [1]   Why do decentralized, seemingly disorganized market economies routinely outperform centrally planned, tightly controlled economies?   One reason is the principle of obliquity. Direct, goal-oriented action works well in simple stable contexts , where tasks are easy, consequences of actions are predictable and feedback is quick. But in complex, turbulent contexts, where tasks are difficult, consequences of any individual action are unpredictable and feedback is delayed, oblique or indirect goals generally work better.   In 2004, economist John Kay recommended