Purpose Parasites
by Kenneth Mikkelsen

Posted on 1 CommentPosted in 9th Global Peter Drucker Forum

A company has to be something. It has to matter. In a connected, network era, leadership is exerted in a 360-degree social, global and ethical context. Increasingly, companies are asked to take a stand to stay relevant and trustworthy in the eyes of its stakeholders. This involves engaging in a larger conversation about why it exists and how it affects people’s lives and society at large. There is a growing focus on purpose in organisations. More and more companies say they are trying to change the world for the better. It has become somewhat fashionable for leading organisations to blow their own trumpets and wave purpose flags from their glass and steel buildings. One session at this year’s World […]

A Magna Carta for Inclusivity and Fairness in the Global AI Economy*
by Olaf Groth PhD, Mark Nitzberg PhD and Mark Esposito PhD

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* adapted from the forthcoming book “Solomon’s Code: Power and Ethics in the AI Revolution” (working title) copyright © 2017 Olaf Groth & Mark Nitzberg. We stand at a watershed moment for society’s vast, unknown digital future.  A powerful technology, artificial intelligence (AI), has emerged from its own ashes, thanks largely to advances in neural networks modeled loosely on the human brain.  AI can find patterns in massive unstructured data sets, improve performance as more data becomes available, identify objects quickly and accurately, and, make ever more and better recommendations and decision-making, while minimizing interference from complicated, political humans.  This raises major questions about the degree of human choice and inclusion for the decades to […]

How did we get here? And how will inclusive policies pave the way to growth?
by Isabella Mader & Wolfgang Müller

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Hate speech to the extent we see it today has surfaced recently. Populist and right-wing protest voters could have voted as they did of late 10 or 20 years ago. They didn’t. How could such destructive resentment build up? Opinion polls may not prove overly helpful in diagnosing the underlying reasons as they are typically influenced by narratives circulated by real or fake news sites, but hardly any substantiated reasoning. A recent study set out to shed some light on causation and help answer the pressing question: How did we get here? Self-inflicted misery: Death by fiscal policy The first indication that the recent growth in populist votes may have something to do with the […]

Inclusive Prosperity: how can organisations model it?
The second of 2 blogs by Prabhu Guptara

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I’ve been involved for something like half a century with all kinds of entities, from some of the largest publicly quoted companies in the world, through privately-controlled small companies, to cooperatives, nonprofits, and charities. Your experience will be different from mine in terms of details. But I’m sure it will have included “privately-owned companies” that are mind-bogglingly philanthropic (and therefore very concerned about inclusive prosperity), as well as “charities” that are run mainly in the interests of the current trustees and/ or managers – and therefore not primarily concerned about inclusive prosperity at all! There are even “co-operatives” that have no sense of responsibility beyond enriching their own members; being a “co-operative” sounds good – […]

What is the main obstacle to creating “inclusive prosperity”?
The first of 2 blogs by Prabhu Guptara

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To answer that question, a niggling matter needs to be resolved first: the impression created by many individuals, organisations and agencies is that “prosperity” is already becoming more “inclusive”; is that, in fact, so? That question has two most likely alternative answers, dependent on whether the respondent likes to the look at the top of society or at the bottom of society. “Yes, prosperity is becoming more inclusive” Those who like to make that response like to look at the bottom of society, and point out that our global system has reduced absolute poverty by half since the year 2000. But if a human being who couldn’t have even one square meal a day earlier […]

Prosperity and Learning; Two Sides of the Same Coin?
by Alex Adamopoulos

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“Poverty has slain its thousands but prosperity its tens of thousands” Variations of this quote have appeared for over a century. The quote comes from a book written in 1822 and it was used in a slightly different variation on July 8, 1896 in a speech given by William Jennings Bryan. Bryan was a leader of the Democratic party and served as Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson. Bryan’s speech, the Cross of Gold, is known as perhaps the most famous and the most effective speech ever delivered at a national party convention on the topic of a monetary plank – in other words, how all things related to money are best managed for the […]

The Inclusive Organization and the Reachability Factor
by Jane McConnell

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What is reachability for an organization? It means people anywhere in the organization can be contacted directly and individually. People can communicate and interact with others beyond their physical workplace. It means ideas and initiatives that originate in one place can reach across the organization, to all interested people. When there is a problem to solve, a challenge to confront, all people in the organization can contribute ideas. From a small company with a few teleworkers to a large, global organization with thousands of people around the world, reachability is a pre-requisite for inclusiveness. Most organizations do not have sufficient reachability and are therefore limited in their ability to be truly inclusive. This is a […]

A Lifetime Opportunity for Entrepreneurs
by Janka Krings-Klebe, Joachim Heinz and Jörg Schreiner

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What did Jeff Bezos do in 2002 to turn Amazon into the business ecosystem that it is today? He discovered how to scale his operations very fast, across multiple markets, and how to follow up on business opportunities and customer needs across industries with blinding speed. Today, companies worldwide scramble to copy Amazons explosive growth and diversified business. In the following, we will outline how to do it, and do it in such a way that it leads to broader prosperity and innovation for society: A lifetime opportunity for entrepreneurs. Digitalization today increasingly dissolves the borders between industries and markets. The accelerating market dynamic means that businesses can no longer afford to bet their income […]