“People will remember three people in Poland’s recent history,” the CEO of Grupa Kety, Roman Przybylski told me at the Christmas gathering of the European Economic Congress (EEC) in Warsaw: John Paul II, Lech Wałęsa, and Leszek Balcerowicz.

Two spiritual and political leaders; one economist—a trinity revealing the moral weight economic transformation can demand.

Professor Balcerowicz, a living legend among economists and policymakers, was the architect of the radical reforms that pulled Poland out of economic freefall: hyperinflation, empty shelves, and a paralyzed command and control system. His critics spoke of “shock without therapy”, and the human cost was undeniably high. Yet the reforms set Poland on a path to becoming one of Europe’s fastest growing economies.

What struck me was that Balcerowicz did more than remove constraints. He shifted something deeper. Citizens moved from being subjects of the state, from passive recipients of plans to becoming market actors, responsible agents in their own economic lives. That demanded judgment, risk taking, and moral courage. The real transformation was not price liberalisation; it was a new relationship to one’s own agency. Painful as it was, that shift worked.

Roman Przybylski, Leszek Balcerowicz, and Johan Roos at EEC in Warsaw, 4 December 2025.

Today, a different kind of transformation is under way inside organizations rather than across whole economies. As AI systems colonize more coordination and decision making, professionals face a similar choice. Do they become subjects of the system, polite approvers of machine recommendations, operators of processes they did not author toward purposes they did not choose? Or do they remain authors and stewards, using AI as a powerful tool while retaining responsibility for what their organizations actually stand for?

This is not primarily a technology question. It is a question of citizenship, and therefore of leadership. At the EEC event, discussions focused on hard assets: public procurement to strengthen Polish firms, defense investment building local capacity, reforming state-owned industries for strategic sovereignty. A Wall Street analyst described trillions flowing into AI infrastructure: data centres, compute, cloud capacity reshaping global markets. Important priorities, all of them. Yet something was conspicuously absent from those conversations: leadership. Poland will debate how many billions to invest in algorithms and infrastructure. My question was simpler: How much will it invest in the leaders who must decide what those algorithms should serve?

Most leadership development still trains people as sophisticated operators—better prompts, faster dashboards. Useful, but not leadership. That creates subjects of the system, not stewards of it.

If AI is to serve as augmentation rather than quiet automation of leadership, three mindset shifts are essential.

First, interrogate—do not simply obey.

Leaders need decision processes in which algorithmic output is always questioned, never accepted as an oracle. When a model proposes a course of action, someone must ask: What is the “because” here? On what assumptions does this rest? Where might this system be blind? Critical thinking erodes when fluent outputs seduce us into mistaking confidence for logic; rebuilding it requires visible structures for tracing reasoning behind recommendations. Board meetings and executive committees should model this discipline. Interrogating algorithms is not Luddism; it is loyalty to reasoning itself.

Second, protect real presence.

One meeting a month, lock the devices away. Run a 90 minute leadership dialogue with no screens—only human beings, real disagreement, and shared sensemaking. Authentic communication depends on embodied presence: voice, gesture, eye contact, and the subtle synchronisation of attention. If every important conversation is mediated, it can help us prepare, but cannot replace the trust emerging when people meet without digital intermediaries.

Third, reward judgment over metrics.

Promotion systems and career paths still overwhelmingly reward those who optimise metrics: hit the target, shave the cost, improve the KPI. Yet the leaders we most need are those who know when to ignore the dashboards. They are willing to say, “The data points to X, but Y is right—because of what we know about our stakeholders, our history, our purpose, our obligations.” Without this capacity to integrate context sensitive judgment, leadership collapses into technically efficient irresponsibility.

Poland has an advantage here that many countries do not. It carries a living memory of what it means to transform a broken system with moral clarity. That experience is not just economic history; it is a reservoir of leadership knowledge.

Poland’s future in the AI era will depend less on the sophistication of the algorithms it deploys, or on how much capital it attracts, than on the kind of leaders it cultivates. The global investment wave will reward countries and companies that pair world class infrastructure with world class judgment. The country will, and should, debate industrial reform, energy transition, and defence spending. But it should devote equal energy to a more uncomfortable question: Will we allow AI to turn professionals back into subjects, or will we use it to deepen a hard won culture of citizenship and responsibility? If Balcerowicz’s generation proved that economic subjects could become market citizens, this generation now has to prove that algorithmic subjects can become professional citizens. That may be the most important transformation yet and the one for which Poland is, uniquely, prepared.

About the author:

Johan Roos is executive director of the Vienna Center for Management Innovation (VCMI) and presidential advisor at Hult International Business School. In Spring 2026, Routledge will publish Johan’s book Human Magic: Leading with Wisdom in an Era of Algorithms.

Germany needs founders who think like top athletes: ambitious, passionate, and focused.
People who don’t just want to be the part of the game – but who want to win it.

Germany has no shortage of brilliant minds. We see it every day: outstanding tech talent, deep science and countless start-ups with potential. What’s missing far too often is something less visible – but far more decisive: the mindset to win.

At BRYCK, we believe the future of entrepreneurship in Germany – and across Europe – will be shaped not just by what founders build, but by how they think. And right now, we don’t need more participation. We need more winners.

Startups Should Be Built Like High-Performance Sports Programs

In elite sports, performance isn’t left to chance. Success is engineered – through structure, coaching, discipline, and relentless focus. Athletes don’t hope for progress. They train for it. They sacrifice for it. They push limits every day.

So why do we treat entrepreneurship differently?

Startup incubators can learn a lot from Olympic training centers. At BRYCK, we’re building exactly that: a high-performance center for founders – not a feel-good start-up hub. We work with ambitious entrepreneurs who are ready to scale, lead and compete internationally. And we give them what they need: capital access, corporate pilots, deeptech focus and a brutally honest sparring environment.

Because no world-class business has ever been built on free coffee and coworking alone.

Germany Needs More Than Good Ideas – It Needs a Winning Culture

We’ve become too comfortable celebrating the act of founding – instead of the results that follow. But if Germany wants to become a true start-up nation, it’s not enough to have structures in place. We need to establish a culture of ambition.

That means:

• Taking big risks.
• Expecting meaningful returns.
• Working through adversity.
• Thinking globally – from day one.

And yes, expecting significant financial reward isn’t greedy. It’s essential. No one becomes world-class without the prospect of real upside.

Seven Levers to Unlock Germany’s Entrepreneurial Potential

To move from good to great, we don’t need to reinvent the wheel – but we must sharpen the edges. These seven priorities point the way forward:

1. Foster entrepreneurial spirit early – We need entrepreneurship as a core subject in schools and universities. BRYCK works closely with Ruhr region universities for that reason.
2. Modernize immigration for global talent – Many top start-ups were founded by international teams. Let’s stop putting barriers in their way.
3. Cut bureaucracy, digitize administration – Speed and simplicity are the baseline for any functioning startup ecosystem.
4. Grow a performance-oriented VC landscape with public co-investments – Ambitious growth needs fuel. Let’s fund it properly and boldly.
5. Position the state as an active innovation partner – Not just regulator, but enabler. Public procurement and deep partnerships with private sector players are essential.
6. Shine a light on entrepreneurial role models – Germany needs to celebrate builders, not just managers. We need more founders on the front pages.
7. Create excellence with a system – We need founder training centers modeled after elite sports institutions. BRYCK is one of them.

Why the Ruhr? Because Hunger Lives Here

At BRYCK, we’re proud to be based in the “Ruhrgebiet” –  in the heart of Germany’s former coal and steel region. It’s a place built on hard work and reinvention. And now, it’s becoming one of Europe’s most promising deeptech innovation zones.

With 22 universities, 250,000+ students, industrial champions and backing from Germany’s largest private foundation (RAG-Stiftung), we’re turning this region into a testing ground for Start-up Germany.

Our new home – the Colosseum, evolving from a historic Krupp hall into a modern theater and now an innovation hub – symbolizes this mindset shift. From steel to startup, from heritage to high performance.

Final Thought: We Don’t Need More Start-ups – We Need Stronger Ones

Let’s be clear: start-ups aren’t an end in themselves. They’re vehicles for solving real problems, creating real value, and transforming economies.

But that only happens if we stop rewarding presence – and start rewarding performance.

So yes: Germany needs founders who think like top athletes. People who don’t just show up – but show up to win.

About the author:

Christian Lüdtke, entrepreneur and investor, is CEO & Co-Founder of start-up coordinator BRYCK

The day before the 2025 Global Peter Drucker Forum officially began, I welcomed a small group to Peter Drucker’s family villa in Vienna. We gathered to discuss Joseph Schumpeter’s century-old insights about “creative destruction” and “intelligent monopolies,” ideas that introduced dynamics into the Austrian School’s closed economic system. The setting carried symbolic weight: discussing disruption in the very space where foundational management thinking took shape.

But what struck me wasn’t the historical resonance. It was how quickly our questions shifted from “what did Schumpeter say?” to “what do these ideas mean given the geopolitical and technological shifts we face today?” That shift from historical inquiry to urgent present-tense questioning set the tone for what followed. Over the next three days, I found myself in five distinct conversations, each offering a different vantage point on this year’s theme: “Next Era Leadership—All hands on deck.”

Five Windows, One Pattern

Hours later, in the pre-Forum workshop “The Wise Path”, experts with Chinese, Indian, European, and American roots explored philosophical traditions from Confucian ethics to yogic discipline to religious teachings. What became clear: these time-honored frameworks give leaders something to stand on while everything shifts beneath them. I presented the Wisdom Compass from my forthcoming book, Human Magic: four directional questions that translate ancient insight into contemporary practice: What is right? What works? What endures? What matters? The framework resonated because it addressed what participants were grappling with: how to preserve human judgment when algorithms optimize for efficiency alone. Looking backward, it turned out, might be the most radical act in an age obsessed with novelty.

That evening, at a dinner with prominent Indian business leaders, many representing generational family enterprises, the conversation took a different turn. Here, “ancient wisdom” wasn’t Western construct applied to Eastern traditions. It was multiple wisdom lineages in genuine dialogue, bringing both philosophical depth and operational urgency. If “all hands” truly matter, they must be global hands, bringing frameworks that challenge and enrich each other.

The main Forum session I moderated, “The CEO’s Guide to AI” with two renowned futurists and AI experts from Silicon Valley, engaged a packed room. We structured it around provocations: “AI will make CEOs more effective.” “AI will make CEO roles obsolete.” “AI will make CEOs irreplaceable—if they practice wisdom.” As senior executives engaged with technical capability, the conversation kept circling back to the morning’s themes: judgment, intuition, wisdom. The technical questions (“How do we implement this?”) quickly gave way to organizational ones (“How do we preserve what makes us distinctly human?”). Here was the gap that ancient wisdom traditions actually address: not technical implementation but preservation of human organization in an algorithmic age.

By the closing plenary, where Forum founder and president Richard Straub invited me to outline our “Next Management” trajectory, a pattern had crystallized. The guiding principles “innovation, more than efficiency”, “human augmentation, more than automation”, “management as art, more than science”, aren’t prescriptions but orientations toward uncertainty, frameworks for asking better questions together.

What struck me was the response from Fellows, Executive Council, and Special Interest Group members engaging with genuine commitment, not polite interest. Rick Goings’s appointment as Honorary Fellow symbolized generational commitment. Infrastructure is emerging to sustain conversation between gatherings, including research partnerships, expanding Drucker Salons, and AI-enabled interviews.

What Convergence Demands

Across these conversations, I kept returning to a realization our Next Management research has been circling: practitioners don’t need more competencies. They need frameworks for asking better questions and, crucially, they need to ask those questions together. The questions that matter most only emerge through sustained dialogue between those who think about management and those who live it daily.

This is what makes the Forum distinctive. It has quietly evolved into something rarer than conferences showcasing thought leaders or gatherings celebrating practitioners. It has become a research site where we observe how questions evolve through cross-pollination. The CEO wrestling with AI adoption gains vocabulary from ancient philosophy. The researcher exploring human augmentation confronts operational reality from global business leaders. The practitioner anchored in one cultural tradition encounters another.

But whether this convergence produces genuine learning community or merely sustains an annual gathering remains an open question. The infrastructure exists. The commitment is real. Yet the test ahead is formidable.

Toward Vienna 2026

Next year’s Forum theme: “Next Gen Innovation: When Everything Depends On Ingenuity.” The Forum’s 20th anniversary in 2028 will create a natural moment for honest assessment. If everything depends on ingenuity, the real question becomes: whose ingenuity, cultivated how, and whether a community like this can develop it as fast as disruption demands it.

Schumpeter understood that destruction must precede creation. But what we’re learning in that villa where Drucker once grew up, across workshops and plenaries and late-night conversations, is that creation in the AI era requires not individual genius but collective ingenuity. Not one hand but all hands, bringing what only they can contribute.

The conversation continues. Next November, it happens again in Vienna. Whether we learn from it quickly enough remains the only question that truly matters.

About the author:

Johan Roos is executive director of the Vienna Center for Management Innovation (VCMI) and presidential advisor at Hult International Business School. His forthcoming book is Human Magic, to be published in 2026.

Introduction

The sun beat down on my back as I stood in Mbare Musika, Harare’s frenetic heartbeat, behind a shaky table covered in second-hand goods—frayed tees, colorful chitenge dresses, a denim jacket that brought a customer’s smile on its face. It was late 2023, and I was 24, giving every bit of myself to this stall, my modest stake in Zimbabwe’s informal economy, which drives more than 60% of our GDP. The market was abuzz with energy: vendors calling prices, kombis blaring, air thickening from roasted maize and hope. I’d haggle with them like Mai Tino, a teacher who adored my $3 skirts, exchanging jibes in Shona while balancing USD and ZWL in an economic tango of survival. My stall was home, constructed from a $200 loan and an obstinate vision. But something was different. I spotted Mai Tino and others—younger, in particular—scrolling on their phones, eyes fixed on Instagram shops rather than mine.

What was I lacking? Why were they pulling away? That’s when I stumbled upon Charles Handy’s Second Curve, that book that hit me like one of Harare’s surprise rain storms. It told me life and business don’t go in straight lines; you’ve got to jump to a new path before it runs dry. For me, it meant leaving Mbare dust for an online marketplace, marketing Zimbabwean eco-friendly fashion where 90% of the population has a mobile
and the internet is fizzing like an electric wire. Stoicism, that quiet power, was my anchor in turbulence. This is my story—a messy, optimistic leap from market stall to online platform, combining Handy’s Second Curve and Zimbabwe’s 2025 digital boom, and the Stoic toughness that kept me grounded. It’s about discovering not just a new enterprise, but a new way of living, in a world that’s moving faster than a minibus down Harare’s streets.

The First Curve: A Stall in Mbare’s Madness

Let’s head back to 2021. I was 22, just out of school, no job in sight, just burning inside and Aunt Rudo’s voice echoing in my head: “Tinashe, make your own way.” Mom and Dad died when I was little, and I grew up with Aunt Rudo, who was a seamstress, whose hands were like magic and whose tongue cut doubt as smoothly as it cut words. She advanced me $200, what she’d saved from sewing funeral dresses, and I used it to purchase a bale of second-hand clothes from someone from Bulawayo. Mbare Musika was where I landed—a sprawling, hot market where dreams and desperation mix. My spot was an oasis of color under a worn tarpaulin, shirts and blouses stacked high, each one of them having a story I’d invent for customers.

“The shirt’s been to London,” I’d quip, pulling up an old Nike sleeve worn down to its white threads. They’d chuckle, and haggle, and settle on $2 or an instant Ecocash transfer. The early days were raw—to sort clothes by candle flame, to withstand rain which transformed the market into an oozing maze, to read customers’ attitudes. But I adored it. By 2022, I was earning enough to lease a one-room flat in Highfield and send Aunt Rudo $50 every month. It was like reaching mountainous heights even though my shoes were still still coated in Mbare’s dust.

Success was sweet, like hot sadza straight from the pot, but it tasted bittersweet. Success came with thorns. The economy of Zimbabwe was a monster—hyperinflation reached 240% in 2022, reducing cash to confetti overnight. I learned to manage multiple currencies, taking USD, ZWL, even barter transactions when money ran dry. Ecocash was my lifeline, enabling me to accept payment when banks crashed. Customers were my girls and boys—Mai Tino, purchasing skirts for her girls; Blessing, a student on the hunt for vintage tees; even Baba James, a pastor who claimed that my ties were lucky charms. But by 2023, the terrain was shifting. Mbare was overcrowded, new vendors emerging with cheaper goods from China. I couldn’t compete on price. Worse, I watched as customers disappeared—not to other stalls, but into their mobiles.

Blessing introduced me to an Instagram store with nicer clothes, cheaper as well. “It’s quick,” she shrugged. Quick? My heart plummeted like a rock. My stall, my hustle, was stalling—what I came to refer to as “market stall saturation,” a quagmire where vendors like me reached a ceiling in Zimbabwe’s 75% informal economy. Power cuts made it worse; I’d close shop on some evenings, torch drained, losing customers to the dark. I might’ve continued, scrounging, but Handy’s warning haunted me: the new curve starts before the old one ends. My inaugural curve was tipping downward. I needed another one. But where? And what in heaven’s name was I supposed to do it?

Recognizing the Second Curve: The Spark of Change

I remember the night it hit me. October 2023, hot and agitated, and I was reclining on a mat outside my apartment, that cracked phone screen pulsing like an ember. A customer, Tapiwa, took notice of an online store that made bags in Zimbabwe, and I dived in, scrolling on platforms like Zindiq and Vaka, even glancing at Jumia. My belly rolled—one part panic, one part hope. This stuff was smooth, reaching clients I’d never get to in Mbare. But it fueled something in me. The internet was expanding in Zimbabwe—34% penetration by 2024, as Starlink extended faster links to areas like Mutare and Chiweshe (DataReportal,). Mobile money filled every corner; Ecocash and InnBucks were what we used to pay for airtime to school fees. Our youth—you know, more than 60% of us under 25 years old—lived online, shopping, selling, dreaming in pixels. Why could I not join them? Why could not my clothes, my hustle, become digital?

That question was my Second Curve moment. But leaping was no grand epiphany—it was wrestling with doubt, slow and messy. I’d stay awake, my head spinning. Was I crazy to walk away from a stall that paid my rent? In Zimbabwe, you’re taught to stick to what works. Aunt Rudo was blunt: “You’re chasing shadows, Tinashe.” And as a woman, the weight of expectation was heavier: people did not want us to build websites, sell at markets, grow beyond what’s safe. Cultural expectations screamed caution, but the writing was on the wall: my sales were plateauing, customers were going online, and Zimbabwe’s economy was shifting to tech. Starlink’s 2024 rollout was revolutionary, and it promised internet even to rural markets. If I stayed put, I’d be stuck, just another vendor among hundreds of stalls.

Stoicism was my anchor. I’d stumbled upon a well-worn copy of Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations at one of these book stalls, and his words resonated: Keep your eyes on what you can control, let go of the rest10. I couldn’t control Zimbabwe’s power cuts or Aunt Rudo’s scowls, but I could control what was next. I began where I refer to as “micro-pivots”—small experiments to dip into the digital waters. I created a WhatsApp group, sharing pictures of me in clothes. Sales dribbled, then cascaded in. I used an adjacent neighbor’s internet to learn about digital marketing online for free, up into the wee hours of the morning despite dodgy lights. I learned Instagram algorithms, mobile payment APIs, even something about blockchain for secure transactions—a nod to 2025’s tech wave. Every movement was a struggle. When a customer received an incorrect size and blasted me on WhatsApp, I wished to disappear. But Stoicism intervened: accept, correct, move on. I sent a replacement, included a complimentary scarf, and learned to double-check orders.

This was not about business—it was about becoming someone else. I was no longer just a vendor, I was a learner, a strategist, a dreamer. The Second Curve was not just a new journey—it was a new me, ready to ride Zimbabwe’s digital wave.

The Second Curve: Building Tsvete Threads

By July of 2024, I was ready to leap! I created Tsvete Threads, an online shop selling eco-friendly Zimbabwean fashion: dresses made from locally cultivated cotton, bags crafted by rural women, jackets recycled from Mbare’s scraps. Why eco-friendly? Because 2025 is not about getting rich—the year is about making an impact. Zimbabwe has real issues: textile waste fills up our rubbish tips, and drought affects our cotton fields severely. Everyone else is eager for ethical fashion, and I spotted an opportunity to position Zimbabwe on that map. Tsvete Threads was not just a store—it was a narrative—a notion of what I refer to as “digital ubuntu,” marrying our communal culture to tech to raise everyone up. Ubuntu is not just jargon, it’s how we get by in Zimbabwe, sharing what little we have, and I needed that same energy to infuse into my brand.

Constructing it was no small accomplishment. I scraped together $500—half from funds saved, half from a microloan from a women’s cooperative in Harare. I partnered up with Kuda, fellow church choir member and coder, to create a basic website. We made Ecocash and Paynow work for accepting payment, but logistics? A complete headache. Roads in Zimbabwe are potholes more than pavement, and shortages of fuel made
deliveries a risk. I discovered Vaya, a local ride-hailing service turned makeshift courier, and cobbled together a system. Marketing was where I was most skillful—at Instagram and WhatsApp, that is. I showed viewers of videos of artisans weaving, told stories of customers wearing my dresses, and ran diaspora-targeted advertising: “Wear Zimbabwe’s soul.” Sales started slow—10 orders a week, then 50, then 100. In early 2025, I was shipping to Johannesburg, London, even Toronto, into a $2 billion diaspora market.

The ripples of its impact reached beyond me. I employed five women from Chiweshe to weave bags, paying them in cash for school fees for their kids. I trained two teens, Blessing and Tapiwa, to assist me on the website, igniting their own tech aspirations. My platform wasn’t merely selling clothing—it was putting people to work, safeguarding our heritage, reducing waste. Stoic principles kept me centered. When a shipment was stranded or the site crashed, I heard Marcus Aurelius: You have power over your mind, not outside events. I resolved the problem, learned, moved on. That mentality transformed me from a vendor who scarcely used a smartphone to an entrepreneur balancing SEO, supply chains, and artisan partnerships.

These were the key learnings:The Second Curve is not merely about survival, but
growth. Table 1 below charts the framework that informed my pivot, synthesizing Stoic
philosophy with applied skills:

Table 1: Second Curve Framework for Sustainable Entrepreneurship

This was a “sustainable Second Curve,” balancing profit with planet and people, aligned with 2025’s global ESG push. It showed me I could be more than a vendor—I could be a changemaker.

Broader Implications: A Roadmap for Zimbabwe and Beyond

So, what is my story about? Not about me—it’s about what’s possible in such a country as Zimbabwe, where each day is a hustle. The Second Curve is a lifeline in a country where economic uncertainty is as prevalent as dew every morning. Beginning a new curve before one collapses isn’t just wise—it’s about survival. My stall might’ve made it to the next day, but I’d have missed out on Zimbabwe’s digital boom, which is set to
reach $1 billion in e-commerce by 2026. Jumping in early allowed me to catch that wave, not be washed under it.
But it’s not just about timing—it’s about mindset and skills. Table 2 below breaks down the barriers I faced and how I tackled them, offering a roadmap for others:

Table 2: Overcoming Barriers to the Second Curve

These hurdles aren’t just Zimbabwe’s—they’re universal. Entrepreneurs everywhere experience their own “market stall saturation,” where old models grind to a halt. In 2025, as AI, blockchain, and sustainability redefine industries, the Second Curve is an universal summons to change. But in Zimbabwe, there’s an added catch: women entrepreneurs, who constitute 52% of the sector, receive fewer funds than men. Energy cuts hit us particularly hard, and cultural norms persuade us to stick to what we know best. I beat that statistic by relying on community—craftsmen, developers, even Aunt Rudo, who came round eventually—and tools like Ecocash that were suited to our reality.

My secret sauce was Stoicism. Faced with a failed microloan or lost delivery, I’d read Epictetus: It’s not what happens to you, but how you react. That mentality converted letdowns into learnings, disorder into opportunity. It’s something any entrepreneur, from Hong Kong to Harare, needs to know: resilience is what brings about reinvention.

What’s coming next for Zimbabwe? I envision a “Second Curve Ecosystem”—a platform where government, tech companies like Econet, and civil society organizations collaborate to enfranchise micro-entrepreneurs. Imagine training centres where vendors learn to code, Starlink internet in rural marketplaces, platforms that connect us to international consumers. It’s not science fiction—the mobile money revolution has already transformed us into traders, and our youth, 60% of us, yearn for it. Such an ecosystem could position Zimbabwe as an example to Africa’s digital future, combining our ubuntu ethos and 2025’s technological revolution.

Conclusion: The Baobab’s New Reach

My path from Mbare market stall to founder of Tsvete Threads isn’t one of clothes or money—it’s one of becoming another person altogether. The Second Curve taught me that change isn’t something to be feared, but something to be caught. Stoicism provided me with the courage to set sail, even when waves were choppy. In 2025, as Zimbabwe surfs a digital renaissance, our story’s just one of many sparks in an even larger blaze. Our nation’s like that of a baobab tree—roots working deep into markets, community,
hustle, but branches reaching for higher skies: tech, sustainability, global aspirations.

I’m not yet done pivoting. Perhaps that next curve is a blockchain platform for transparent artisan payments or an e-learning hub training rural vendors to be digital. Who knows? Regardless, I know this: the Second Curve isn’t an act of impulse, it’s a lifestyle—one of constant looking, constant readiness to grow. To every entrepreneur, from Mbare’s market stalls to London’s office towers: don’t wait for your curve to implode. Discover your next one today. Embrace uncertainty, doubt, excitement.
Become the baobab—rooted, yet reaching for the sky.

About the author:

Rosemary Chiedza Mukucha is the 2025 Drucker Challenge winner in the managers/entrepreneurs category.

The exact moment when the soul asks for change

Prologue

It’s like walking out of a concert in the middle of the applause.
Everyone stands, claps, declares your performance flawless—and yet, you walk toward the exit in silence. Not out of disrespect, but because, in that moment, you realize you no longer want to be there. The courage to leave what is working doesn’t come from failure. It comes from lucidity. And from honesty with one-self, a rare virtue in times when performance matters more than truth.
This is what Charles Handy [9] taught us with the metaphor of the second curve. The sigmoid curve, as he explains, represents the rise and decline of a trajectory, personal, professional, or organizational. For Handy, wisdom lies in starting a new curve before the old one reaches its peak. Because once success reaches the top, decline has already begun, and choosing to begin a new journey at the height of comfort is one of the greatest acts of autonomy we can live.
In a society that prizes accumulation and consistency as signs of progress, anticipating a rupture feel like heresy, but this is precisely where life management meets business management. Just as an organization must pivot before market saturation, an individual must change before the soul is depleted, this is the bridge between personal life and business: both require courage, timing, and vision to reinvent themselves.
The answer might lie in the work of Byung-Chul Han [7], who reflects that the performance society promised us freedom but delivered exhaustion. Success, when disconnected from meaning, becomes a disguised prison, and stability, as existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir [2] reminds us, can be the greatest enemy of transformation cause we change the world by changing the way we see the world.
This essay is a crossing, a real narrative, marked by a choice: to leave behind a career, an ongoing degree, awards earned to follow a silent intuition. A decision not rational in the conventional sense, but
profoundly coherent. Because, as Handy taught us, true wisdom is not reacting to collapse, but foreseeing the need for change.

The Applause

I was 21 and a known name in the hallways of my school in Brazil, as a member of a research lab focused on production technologies, I had already won two academic awards, presented at conferences, and received public praise from professors and coordinators. A promising future lay ahead, neatly mapped out. Invitations to join new research groups were frequent; I felt everything was steering toward a direct master’s program or even a solid academic career.
My routine was intense, I woke up early, spent my days between classes and the lab, slept four hours a night, and still found time to write papers and proposals. Recognition came, but there was an inner dissonance I couldn’t yet name.
To others, I was the embodiment of youthful academic success, but inside me, a troubling question grew louder: “Is this reallyit?”, when someone praised my work, I smiled on the outside, but deep down, I wondered if that was truly the life I wanted to sustain for the next eight years through to a PhD. There were many prizes to compete for, but the meaning was slipping away.
Handy [9] warned us that the trap of success is it’s ability to blind us to change, and in truth, I was blind. I couldn’t see that the external shine was dulling my inner listening. It was as if I were living out a script written by others, parents, teachers, institutions, in which I performed my role well, but hadn’t written a single line.
This is what modern management is also about. Peter Drucker [5] believed that it’s not just about doing things right, but doing the right things. In business, clinging to a product that has lost its purpose out of attachment to profit can cost the company its survival. In life, staying on a path out of fear of disap-
pointing others can cost your mental health. The new curve must begin before the crisis and sometimes,
only silence allows us to hear it emerge.
The restlessness grew, but as the french philosopher Simone Weil [12] once wrote, “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity,” and I needed to learn to listen to myself attentively, to be generous with myself, to pause and ask not what others expected of me, but what made sense to me.
More than that, I began to understand that success without meaning is a sophisticated form of imprisonment. The academic system, like many business models, rewards productivity not authenticity. I was efficient, but for whom? Who was I really serving with all my effort?
That first act was my first curve, rising, celebrated, full of promise, but deaf.

The Rupture

The invitation to volunteer in France came as a detour. I was to spend eight months working in schools in the French countryside, speaking about brazilian culture and assisting in ecology and sustainable development classes. It seemed like just another intercultural experience a break with a defined end, but like all meaningful ruptures, it began small and quietly.
I remember the first time I entered a french classroom: there was noise, excitement, life. A little boy asked me what the rain in the Amazon was like. I smiled. Spoke calmly, but something shifted inside me, it had been a long time since I had spoken about the natural world with such light in my eyes. That child reawakened a dormant curiosity within me.
The students there weren’t expecting formulas or scientific articles. They wanted stories, exchanges, eye contact, questions that didn’t fit into academic frameworks, and in that space between knowing and feeling, I began to doubt my first curve. The question was no longer, “What can I do with this technical knowledge?” but “What transformation can I bring about with what I know?”
It was there that I understood a hard truth: knowledge without responsibility is just vanity. I didn’t want to be vain, I wanted to be useful in a way that made sense, and there was no room for that in the place I had come from in Brazil. At least, not in the way I envisioned.
As Michel Foucault [6] reminds us, where there is power, there is resistance, and the greatest power we face today is silent normativity the one that dictates what success looks like, what future we should want, what is desirable. Rupture, as Foucault would argue, is also political resistance. Breaking with social expectations is not merely a personal act, it’s an ethical stance: the refusal to betray who you are.
This tension between the expected and the authentic was powerfully captured in a familiar character: Elsa, from the film Frozen. While everyone expected her to stay controlled and conceal her powers, Elsa chose the opposite to set herself free, even if it meant stepping outside what the kingdom called normal. The song “Let it Go” isn’t just a song to me, it’s an anthem of the second curve. It’s about walking away from a role that works but confines. It’s about choosing inner coherence, even when it looks like madness to the outside world.
Like Elsa, in that small french village, i realized that the first curve offered tome, safe, efficient, praised no longer fit who I was becoming. The change wasn’t planned, it was vital, I saw that the curve was shifting, and I knew I would have to leap even without guarantees.

The Madness of Leaving

Returning to Brazil felt like slipping into old shoes, they still fit, but they hurt. The same hallways, the same meeting agendas, the same academic productivity goals, but I was no longer the same, and no one seemed to notice.
I tried to pick up my projects, reintegrate into research groups, but each attempt felt like pushing against a door locked from the inside. The automatic enthusiasm I once had was gone, I was no longer driven by prestige or publication but by purpose.
I began talking with professors and peers about the possibility of changing paths, reactions ranged
from confusion to disappointment. One professor kindly said, “You’d be crazy to leave now, you have
everything to shine here.” And he was right, I had everything except the will. Nietzsche [11], in his lucid radicality, wrote “Becoming who you are requires the courage to disappoint others,” and there is no courage more unpopular than the one that questions success. Leaving a socially validated path is often seen as failure, when in truth, it may be the birth of true autonomy.
So I applied to a French university. I chose a program in biology focused on ecology and life sciences, a new lens, less technical, more attentive to the relationship between humans and nature. When I received the acceptance letter, I cried, partly from joy, but also from mourning all that I was leaving behind.
The transition was not romantic. I suspended my degree in Brazil, cut ties, and faced family incomprehension. I started working remotely, in silence, with discipline. The world that once echoed with applause was now reduced to a computer screen and long task lists, but it was mine. For the first time, entirely mine.

The Silent Reconstruction

The transition to the new curve wasn’t marked by fanfare, but by silence. A silence that was dense, fertile, necessary. Without the hectic routine of my former university life, my days unfolded in new rhythms: time to read attentively, to walk without urgency, to eat with presence. For the first time in years, I slept eight hours a night—and that alone was revolutionary.
I began to study for understanding, not for assessment. I reconnected with writing as a form of expression, not obligation, and something within me, slowly, began to settle. The noise of achievement was replaced by the murmur of coherence, it was no longer about being right in the eyes of others. It was about feeling aligned—internally.
Charles Handy [9] speaks of the “valley” between curves as a time of uncertainty and loss. It is a transition zone where nothing feels solid, and old metrics no longer apply. Indeed, I felt suspended, but that valley became my listening ground.
Byung-Chul Han [7] warns us about the risks of modern hyperactivity, how the society of exhaustion drowns out inner listening, and it was in that forced deceleration that I began to hear, more clearly, what noise had once silenced: my thirst for meaning.
In the business world, this moment is comparable to the silent redesign of a brand, to the investment in innovation that doesn’t yet yield profits but lays the foundation for longevity. Silent reconstruction does not attract spotlights, but it has vision, and without vision, neither an organization nor a human being survives the obsolescence of their own success.
The Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius [?], in his stoic meditations, gave a simple but profound directive: “Don’t waste time arguing about what a good person should be. Be one.” I read that as an ethical call: instead of seeking external validation, cultivate internal integrity.
And that’s what I began to build. A version of myself more aligned with what I think, feel, and desire. A self that no longer needed constant approval to know I was on the right path.

The Curve of Coherence

Today, on the eve of my permanent move to France, I look back and barely recognize the student who once confused herself with her performance. What used to be urgency is now intention. What used to be anxiety
is now a plan.
The new curve is less visible. There are no awards or rankings, but there is lightness, clarity, presence.
Peter Drucker [4] once warned that there is nothing more useless than doing with excellence something that shouldn’t be done at all. That kind of clarity is rare and, therefore, revolutionary.
Brazilian singer Cazuza [3], with his poetic boldness in the song ’O Tempo no Para’ (“Time Does Not Stop”), voiced a similar discomfort with a world that insists on repeating the past and calling it progress: “I see the future repeating the past / I see a museum of great novelties.” What looks like advancement is often just a sophisticated form of stagnation.
When we follow a path simply because it works, we may be contributing to the very museum of nov-
elties Cazuza denounced where everything changes so that nothing actually does. Changing before the fall, as Charles Handy proposes, is rejecting this toxic loop. It is interrupting what works in order to pursue
what is true.
My new definition of success is no longer about outcomes alone, it includes health, quality time, and
the ability to contemplate. I call it “qualitative growth”, and it applies to both life and business: a company that grows financially while making its people sick is not growing in any real sense. Today, growth means growing with coherence.
In practice, that means rejecting the logic of hyperproductivity, choosing more sustainable processes, aligning values and actions. The second curve, when applied to organizations, forces us to rethink what counts as success and what must be abandoned before it collapses.
The courage it takes to change your life at its peak is no less than the courage needed to redesign a profitable but unsustainable business. In both cases, it’s about letting go of the illusion of stability in order to choose integrity.
And that’s what this curve teaches me: living well does not mean living without risks. It means living without masks.

Epilogue

The first curve gave me a name. The second gave me a face. In the first, I was the ideal student, dedicated, recognized, awarded. In the second, I am simply someone searching for meaning. The transition wasn’t a dramatic break, but a slow, inevitable shedding of skin. Because the worst kind of stagnation is the one disguised as progress.
Charles Handy taught us that life, like business, requires reinvention before decline. Peter Drucker challenged us to imagine the future, not merely react to it. And life, this life is only truly worth it when we have the courage to begin again, even when everything still seems to be going well.
There comes a moment when possibility begins to wilt, even as everything still blooms on the outside. It’s the moment when the soul demands coherence, and the world demands continuity. The choice, then, is this: to silence your intuition, or to listen to it even without proof.
“Freedom is too little. What I desire still has no name,” wrote Clarice Lispector [10]. The second curve might be just that: a name yet to be invented. A model yet to be drawn. A future yet to be built.
May this text not be just an essay, but an invitation. A breath of wind for those who, like me, sense there is something beyond the current curve and perhaps, it’s time to leap.

Bibliography

[1] AURELIUS, Marcus. Meditations.São Paulo: Penguin Companhia, 2020.

[2] BEAUVOIR, Simone de. Pour une morale de l’ambiguïté. Paris: Gallimard, 1947.

[3] CAZUZA. O tempo não para [Time doesn’t stop]. Performer: Cazuza. Composer: Cazuza and Ar-
naldo Brandão. Album: O tempo não para. Rio de Janeiro: Som Livre, 1988. 1 sound disc (LP, 33 1/3 rpm).

[4] DRUCKER, Peter F. Managing for Results. New York: Harper and Row, 1964.

[5] DRUCKER, Peter F. The Effective Executive. New York: HarperBusiness, 2006.

[6] FOUCAULT, Michel. Microphysics of power. 19. ed. Rio de Janeiro: Graal, 2014.

[7] HAN, Byung-Chul. The Burnout Society. Petrópolis: Vozes, 2017.

[8] HANDY, Charles.The Age of Paradox. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1994.

[9] HANDY, Charles. The Second Curve: Thoughts on Reinventing Society. London: Random House Business Books, 2015.

[10] LISPECTOR, Clarice. Near to the Wild Heart. Rio de Janeiro: Rocco, 1998.

[11] NIETZSCHE, Friedrich. Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is. São Paulo: Companhia de Bolso, 2007.

[12] WEIL, Simone. La Pesanteur et la Grâce. São Paulo: Loyola, 1993.

About the author:

Vitoria Maia Machadoate is the 2025 Drucker Challenge winner in the student category.

Address by Kate Handy at the Peter Drucker Challenge Awards Ceremony, 6 November 2025

All today I have heard my parents in my head. Primarily a Handy twinkle, as I’m not sure my father really believed in having lots of leaders. 

He did believe in leadership, though – don’t panic! 

Dad would see leaders as more like gamekeepers than the traditional tour guide model. 

You know the type: umbrella in the air, standing in front … “Follow me, just listen to me and only look at what I point at.” 

Whereas gamekeepers are passionate about their area and keep it as safe as possible, with some obvious routes to take but allowing the individual to explore and discover and possibly get a bit uncomfortable, but curious.

My parents believed that leadership was within us all. 

Not the leadership of winning but the art of creating a community of curiosity for the benefit of all. 

Dad was never a leader in his own family. My mother was definitely the boss. He did not parent from in front but more as a reflective observer …. Which did not always work, to be fair. 

His Irish family thought he was a bit fancy and seeking of world appeal, and my mother’s very British Army family didn’t understand him at all, as he didn’t play sport or shoot…. He read books and went to plays. He really couldn’t win! 

Famously, one night as he was courting my mother, her parents asked where they were going. “We’re going to see Hamlet …” A rather puzzled look passed between them as they said, “I don’t think we know him, who are his parents?”

We are here at the Forum to focus on the “second curve”. Dad wrote the book of that name 10 years ago for his grandchildren, to introduce them to a world he was trying to predict and give them some insights. They are now all in their late teens and still haven’t read it! 

He then wrote 21 Letters on Life and its Challenges, breaking down his advice and observations into 21 ideas for them. They haven’t read that one either. But that’s family for you. By his last book, The View from Ninety, published just a few months ago, I think he had despaired of his family and he dedicated it to his late wife with the words, “To Liz who expected great things of me but never explained what they were”.

The idea of the second curve was to disrupt the phrase, If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. 

Well… it depends what broke means, doesn’t it.

Dad would challenge that broke is anything that isn’t energy giving, inspiring or evolving. This is the age of convenience and comfort. We need this disruptive thinking and approach more than ever. Why is there meant to be only one right answer or way? 

Together my parents helped individuals and companies create a ”still life of five objects and a flower”. No tech. This way the values and talents could be displayed as a work of art … a reminder …a challenger. 

Keeping that image of a still life in focus, every individual or group can keep reinventing itself, creating the second curve. Acting like a multi-faceted diamond, changing colour and lightdepending on the new angle or adventure, rather than just a smooth marblewith one game to play and then you are out.

The second curve needs to be the way we think about everything. Not only our businesses, but our relationships, our health and our planet.

Dad used to say that he was on his third marriage. There would be a gasp, a theatrical pause, and then he would say, “But luckily to the same woman”. They had a second curve in many aspects of their life. 

It was dangerous. What if the challenge would make them walk away? 

A fear of change, a need for stability and comfort: these are all enemies of creativity.

The second curve not only takes creativity, it takes bravery. When to do it. How to do it. 

Dad was never an answer-at-the-back-of-the-book kind of man. Believe me, people have looked and asked. 

He was the master of the great question.

What is work for? What is enough? What exactly are you trading your time, energy and talents for?

What next?

He loved the Ernst Schumacher quote: “Our ordinary mind always tries to persuade us that we are nothing but acorns and that our greatest happiness will be to become bigger, fatter, shinier acorns .. but that is of interest only to the pigs. Our faith gives us knowledge ofsomething much better … that we become oak trees. Oak trees grow by spreading out into the unknown spaces.” 

Second-curve thinking is to inspire us, not to live our lives to feed the pigs (or fat cats, as my mother called them), but to strive for those unknown spaces.

My parents would love the oak tree conversations taking place in these rooms and in these essays. This forum, so creatively curated by Ilse and Richard, was the one place my parents came back to again and again. 

They did not do repeats – they didn’t even like repeating cooking recipes. So, it is a mark of their deep respect and love for you both and you all. 

Kindred spirits as my mother would say. 

So, thank you for the invitation to continue our family presence here tonight, and please raise your glasses to Richard, Ilse and the Drucker team for creating a community of curiosity for the benefit of all. 

About the author:

Kate Handy is head of a multidisciplinary clinic in London and daughter of Liz and Charles Handy.

Business expansion presents organisations with dilemmas as old as commerce itself: how to scale without sacrificing human connection, and how to balance the demands of stability with the imperatives of adaptability. Insight into these challenges can be found not merely in contemporary management literature but also in the enduring structures of the Greek and Roman theatres in Syracuse, Sicily—each an ancient template for organisational design, and more significantly, for cultivating a culture fit for change.

The Greek Model: Clarity, Human Scale, and Defined Boundaries

The Greek Theatre at Syracuse, hewn into the hillside and meticulously proportioned, demonstrates the value of intentional design. The semi-circular arrangement, regular rhythm of columns, and clear demarcation between performers and audience reflect a mindset in which structure, clarity, and precision underpin every activity.

Translating this philosophy, businesses that follow the Greek model are characterised by well-defined roles, transparent processes, and strong boundaries. Each operational unit functions with clarity and coherence, echoing the way each stone in the ancient architecture fits perfectly into the whole. This design is particularly effective for organisations whose primary strengths are reliability, regulatory compliance, and predictable service delivery. Decisions flow through explicit channels, and the business as a whole benefits from minimised ambiguity and maximised accountability.

Furthermore, within this environment, communication is generally direct. Issues—whether operational or cultural—are surfaced early, enabling timely intervention. Such frameworks often produce a culture resistant to chaos but sometimes less amenable to rapid innovation or cross-boundary collaboration.

The Roman Approach: Flow, Scale, and Emergent Systems

In contrast, the Roman Theatre was constructed not as a part of the landscape, but as an architectural innovation that pushed beyond natural constraints. The use of arches, vaults, and extensive substructures enabled the creation of vast, flexible spaces dedicated to facilitating movement and interaction.

Businesses inspired by this model prioritise integration and fluidity. Instead of operating as a collection of discrete, modular units, the organisation is orchestrated as an interconnected system where information, decisions, and resources flow freely. This approach supports environments where swift adaptation and cross-functional collaboration are necessary for survival and growth. Here, systems thinking replaces linear process mapping, encouraging a culture that prizes experimentation, continuous improvement, and agility.

Importantly, the Roman model allows for scale without rigidity: as the organisation expands, its underlying systems can be extended, bypassed, or reconfigured with minimal friction. This adaptability, however, demands a workforce and leadership team comfortable with ambiguity, empowered to make decisions, and encouraged to transcend previously static boundaries.

Stone to Strategy: Navigating the Cultural Shift

Choosing between these archetypes is rarely a simple matter of preference or sector. Rather, it represents a profound cultural shift—one that must be navigated with intention and clarity of purpose. The transition from static roles and scripted routines to environments supporting autonomy, creativity, and engagement is, at its heart, a call for leaders to redesign not just structures, but shared beliefs and behavioural norms.

Embedding the logic of both models within the same business creates an organisational form capable of balancing the apparent opposites of discipline and freedom, order and innovation.

The Hybrid Enterprise: Where Rigidity Meets Flexibility

Most modern businesses operate in sectors where both reliability and adaptability are critical for survival. Thus, the most robust approach is often a synthesis:

• Core business functions such as finance, compliance, or high-consequence operations, retain the discipline and modularity of the Greek approach. These areas benefit from repeatable processes and clear boundaries, lowering risk and simplifying oversight.
• Customer experience, innovation efforts, and digital transformation initiatives are arranged along Roman lines—systemic, fluid, and designed for collaboration across boundaries. These domains thrive on agility, experimentation, and spontaneous cooperation.

The cultural and strategic challenge is to engineer a business in which Greek rigidity and Roman flexibility reinforce rather than undermine one another. Achieving this hybrid requires leaders to set the tone for trust, learning, and honest reflection. Recruitment and succession processes favour not just technical competence but also adaptability, intellectual humility, and the ability to build bridges across disciplines.

Over time, formerly siloed departments dissolve in favour of networked collaboration, and the business functions more as a living ecosystem than a rigid bureaucratic architecture. Knowledge and insight flow across teams, and decision-making is both decentralised and informed by a coherent, shared purpose.

Sustaining Growth: Leadership and Organisational Resilience

Growth over the long term is never purely linear. Market shifts, technological disruption, and changes in stakeholder expectations impose both pressure and opportunity. Maintaining strong foundational principles—the Greek stones beneath the Roman arches—is essential. Flexibility alone can foster fragile, scattered organisations; structure alone can breed inertia.

Leaders attuned to this reality cultivate organisations where cultural depth and strategic clarity are prized. They harmonize resilience with ambition, ensuring that periods of transformation do not erode what has already been built, but instead rest upon and strengthen those foundations.

This process of intentional cultural engineering equips businesses to thrive amid complexity and uncertainty—not simply by reacting to external shocks, but by continuously evolving in line with their values and organisational identity.

Conclusion: Architectural Thinking for the Future of Business

The enduring lesson from the classical world is that design matters—both in stone and in enterprise. Businesses that intentionally blend the clarity and stability of the Greeks with the adaptability and ambition of the Romans are best equipped to meet the demands of modern markets. The future business is not a static hierarchy but an evolving, human-centred system—resilient, agile, and capable of flourishing through cultural and structural synthesis.

About the Author:

Nick Hixson is a business advisor and writer on strategy and leadership. He explores how complexity and human behaviour shape organisations. He is a Peter Drucker Associate and chairs the Advisory Board of the World Institute for Action learning.

Peter Drucker did not simply name the knowledge economy — he equipped us to navigate it. His central insight was profound: when knowledge became the primary resource of advanced economies, the knowledge worker would become the defining agent of value creation.

For more than half a century, that framing guided management theory and practice. Yet today, the conditions Drucker described have shifted. Knowledge — once scarce and unevenly distributed — has become abundant, searchable, and increasingly automated. Artificial intelligence, cloud platforms, and machine-learning tools now execute tasks that once belonged exclusively to professionals.

This does not render Drucker’s contribution obsolete. Rather, it brings his work to an inflection point — and reveals the next evolution of his thinking.

Drucker’s Insight, Extended

In Post-Capitalist Society (1993), Drucker characterized knowledge as the central resource of modern economic life. The knowledge worker, he argued, would be self-managing, responsible for continual learning, and evaluated by their contribution.

Drucker also warned that knowledge yields value only when applied toward results. “Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly,” he wrote, “or it vanishes.”

Today, that vanishing is visible — not because knowledge is disappearing, but because its scarcity value is.

If nearly any person — or machine — can access domain expertise instantly, then knowledge can no longer serve as the primary source of competitive advantage.

We have crossed the boundary of Drucker’s original paradigm.

The Limits of the Knowledge Worker Model

In its prime, the knowledge-worker concept reshaped organizations and economies. It fueled innovation in medicine, finance, and technology. It enabled more autonomous, purposeful work.

But the model now strains under three realities:

1) Ubiquity of knowledge
Search and AI tools make expertise widely accessible, compressing its strategic value.

2) Shrinking skill half-life
Durable competencies decay rapidly as technology advances.

3) Automation of cognition
Computational systems increasingly perform tasks once synonymous with professional identity — drafting briefs, analyzing data, writing code, generating designs.

These conditions do not negate the importance of knowledge — but they expose the need for a new economic actor, one whose value stems not from knowledge possession but from the capacity to transform knowledge into new forms of value.

The Value Creator

The Value Creator represents the next stage in Drucker’s lineage.
They convert knowledge — human and machine — into meaningful outcomes under conditions of uncertainty.

Where knowledge workers apply expertise, Value Creators:

• Reframe challenges
• Coordinate diverse actors
• Build trust across boundaries
• Learn rapidly and recursively
• Generate novelty

Their defining strength is synthesis: combining insight, context, and technology to produce results that did not previously exist.

Core capabilities include:

Relational Acuity
Value creation increasingly occurs through interaction. Trust, alignment, and shared purpose become economic resources.

Adaptive Intelligence
Value Creators shift mental models fluidly, iterating in real time.

Meta-Learning
They understand how they learn — integrating new knowledge with speed and discernment.

Ecosystem Orchestration
They leverage networks — teams, platforms, machines — to co-create outcomes.

Drucker taught that contribution is the core measure of work. Value Creators embody this principle — but in a new context of ubiquitous knowledge and intelligent tools.

Organizations as Living Systems

When value emerges through interaction, organizations must operate less as hierarchies and more as ecosystems. Advantage depends on interaction capital — the ability to enable productive collaboration among diverse contributors.

This shifts organizational design:

• From control → enablement
• From roles → capabilities
• From planning → experimentation
• From static structure → dynamic configuration

The leader becomes a designer of conditions, not a distributor of instructions. Their role is to foster clarity of purpose, psychological safety, and freedom to explore — the essential soil for emergence.

This is not softer management; it is more demanding.
It requires humility, responsiveness, and the discipline to remove friction while leaving agency intact.

Leadership for Emergence

Drucker wrote that leadership is not charisma but the capacity to raise people to higher levels of performance and vision. Today, this means cultivating the circumstances in which others can create value beyond what hierarchy or expertise alone can generate.

The evolving leadership profile centers on:

• Shared purpose
• Trust and transparency
• Cross-boundary integration
• Rapid learning
• Stewardship of autonomy

The core question for boards and executives becomes:

Are we managing for efficiency — or leading for emergence?

Those who take the latter path create enduring capacity for value creation in a world where knowledge is democratized.

A New Agenda for Education and Policy

Education was designed to prepare people to possess knowledge. It can  now prepare people to create value.

This requires:

• Inquiry over memorization
• Experimentation over certainty
• Collaboration over isolation

Public policy can likewise expand participation by ensuring broad access to tools, platforms, and networks that support entrepreneurial capability.

When knowledge is everywhere, the differentiator becomes what people can do with it.

Completing the Arc

The post-knowledge economy does not break from Drucker — it completes him.

He taught that knowledge, well applied, is the foundation of contribution.
We now see that contribution depends on the human capacity to integrate knowledge — human and machine — into new forms of value.

The knowledge worker transformed the 20th century.
The Value Creator will define the 21st.

Our task is to design organizations, institutions, and cultures that enable Value Creators to flourish.

About the authors:

Mark Béliczky is a CEO, board member, and leadership advisor who helps organizations thrive through purpose, adaptability, and value creation. A Partner at CXO Partners, he has served in senior executive roles across global enterprises and growth ventures. He is also a speaker and author of more than 150 published articles on modern leadership, value creation, and organizational transformation.

Hunter Hastings is a business educator and an author and researcher on the subject of the future of management. He is a managing partner at Bialla Venture Partners, a series of seed-stage venture capital funds, and a former CMO at JBS Foods.