Peter Drucker and the Two Faces of Technology
by Rick Wartzman

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

In discussing his new book, Machines of Loving Grace: The Quest for Common Ground Between Humans and Robots, the journalist John Markoff pointed out how polarizing the subject of automation and its effect on employment tends to be.   “You can go from the International Federation of Robotics on one side, which argues that we are on the cusp of the biggest job renaissance in history, to Moshe Vardi, a Rice computer scientist, who argues that all human jobs will be obsolete by 2045,” Markoff observed. “Which group is right?”   If Peter Drucker were around, I don’t think he’d hesitate to serve up an answer: Neither.   Drucker, who had watched this struggle play […]

Mobilizing Intelligence: Three Lessons From the Drucker Forum in Vienna
by Rick Wartzman

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

During a visit last week to the place of Peter Drucker’s birth, I suddenly remembered a note that he had written shortly before his death.   I had come to Vienna to participate in the Fourth Global Peter Drucker Forum, which attracted hundreds of executives, scholars and students to contemplate what, in the aftermath of the global financial crisis and Great Recession, a better form of capitalism might look like. Much of the discussion on “Capitalism 2.0” centered, sensibly, on finding alternatives to maximizing shareholder value.   But other important threads also ran through the proceedings, including the way that information technology is reshaping all sorts of organizations. It was this particular theme that prompted […]

Is There Really a Movement Building to Counter
“Maximizing Shareholder Value”? By Rick Wartzman

Posted on 5 CommentsPosted in 4th Global Peter Drucker Forum

Last January, a group of leading management thinkers gathered in Switzerland to “see what can be done to . . . energize organizations in ways that make them better for the organizations themselves, better for the people doing the work, better for those for whom the work is being done and better for society as a whole.”   Next April, a group called Conscious Capitalism expects to draw some 1,500 people to San Francisco to explore how companies can “adopt a higher purpose that transcends profit maximization.”   And in between, hundreds will convene in Vienna on November 15 and 16 for the fourth Global Peter Drucker Forum, which will examine how business can become, […]