How Close Are We To An Entrepreneurial Society?
by Steve Denning

Posted on 1 CommentPosted in 8th Global Peter Drucker Forum

In his book, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (1985), Peter Drucker argued that the US was experiencing “a profound shift from a ‘managerial’ to an ‘entrepreneurial’ economy.” This had been made possible by “new applications of management…and above all, to systematic innovation.”[1]   Entrepreneurial management, Drucker wrote, requires very different managerial practices including (1) focusing managerial vision on opportunity; (2) generating an entrepreneurial spirit throughout its entire management group and (3) systematic listening to and interactions with the staff.[2]   “Today’s businesses, especially the large ones,” Drucker wrote in 1985, “simply will not survive in this period of rapid change and innovation unless they acquire entrepreneurial competence….Existing businesses will need to change, and change greatly in any […]

In The Creative Economy, Mindsets Matter More Than Technology
by Steve Denning

Posted on 1 CommentPosted in 7th Global Peter Drucker Forum

“The world,” writes Alan Murray in Fortune, “is in the midst of a new industrial revolution.” The “frictionless corporation” of the 21st Century is “driven by technology that is connecting everyone and everything, everywhere and all the time.”   What then are the management practices of “the frictionless corporation” that enable “labor, information, and money move easily, cheaply, and almost instantly”?   Over the last year, a group of companies interested in finding out joined together to form a Learning Consortium for the Creative Economy, sponsored by Scrum Alliance, a membership association of more than 400,000 members with the mission of transforming the world of work.   Following nine site visits conducted during the summer […]

How The Internet Is Forcing The Humanization Of Work
by Stephen Denning

Posted on Leave a commentPosted in 7th Global Peter Drucker Forum

The humanist strand of management thinking that celebrates teams and collaboration through respect for customers and workers as human beings has a long and distinguished history. It includes Mary Parker Follett (1920s), Elton Mayo and Chester Barnard (1930s), Abraham Maslow (1940s), Douglas McGregor (1960s), Peter Drucker (1970s), Peters and Waterman (1980s), Katzenbach and Smith (1990s), and Gary Hamel (2000s).   Yet despite almost a century of fine management writing and many successful initiatives, the ugly truth is that the lasting impact on general management practice has been limited. Even humanist change initiatives that were dramatically successful by objectively measured standards have often been discarded by the firms that introduced them. Sooner or later, firms revert […]

Making Management as Simple as Frisbee
by Steve Denning

Posted on Leave a commentPosted in 5th Global Peter Drucker Forum

This is a cross-post from the HBR Complexity Serieswritten by Steve Denning, and is one of the perspectives relating to the 2013 Drucker Forum Theme (“Managing Complexity”).   Complexity is not a new condition. While it’s true that many aspects of life have become more densely connected and unpredictable, the fact is that our world is inherently complex. Most of the environments we move in and tasks we perform require us to deal with interdependent and dynamic phenomena.   Consider (as economists Andrew Haldane and Vasileios Madouros recently did) the seemingly simple task of catching a Frisbee. It requires the resolution in real-time of two infinitely variable factors: the Frisbee’s trajectory and the catcher’s own […]

Why Management 2.0 Is Inevitable
by Steve Denning

Posted on Leave a commentPosted in 4th Global Peter Drucker Forum

In my post, “The Revolutionary Tenets of Management 2.0”, I described five fundamental shifts that firms must master to navigate the transition to the new management ecosystem of Management 2.0.   In my TEDx talk in Oslo last month, I explained in more detail why the transition to Management 2.0 is not merely desirable: it is inevitable.   In the talk, I examine the epic shift in power in the marketplace from the seller to the buyer, that flows from Peter Drucker’s foundational insight in 1973: “There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.”   The shift in power has had devastating consequences for hierarchical bureaucracies, which have been insufficiently […]

The Revolutionary Tenets of Management 2.0
Steve Denning

Posted on 1 CommentPosted in 4th Global Peter Drucker Forum

Revolutionary changes in the basic tenets of management are under way. Roger Martin has described the overall transition from shareholder value (making money) to customer capitalism (delighting the customer). For firms to navigate the transition to the new ecosystem of “Management 2.0”, they must master five fundamental shifts:   1. The management mindset 2. The role of managers 3. The way work is coordinated 4. The values practiced and 5. The way people communicate.   Five fundamental shifts in management practice   Shift #1: Management mindset: From inside-out to outside in To accomplish the transition to customer capitalism, reflecting the shift in the balance of power in the marketplace from seller to buyer, firms must […]