“Learning is not an activity of one specific learning organ—the mind or the intellect. It is a process in which the whole person is engaged: the hand, the eye, the nervous system, the brain.”

–Peter Drucker, “What We Already Know about American Education Tomorrow,” 1971 lecture

High school and college students are now making their way back to campus in the hopes of preparing themselves to someday take their rightful place in the workforce. But how well are we preparing them? Narayana Kocherlakota, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, asserted this month that about one-third of the nation’s joblessness is the result of a mismatch between the skills needed and the workers available.

For Peter Drucker, one key to educating people successfully was to make sure that they learned how to both think and do. More and more, he wrote in his 1993 book Post-Capitalist Society, we are going to “have to be prepared to live and work simultaneously in two cultures—that of ‘the intellectual,’ who focuses on words and ideas, and that of the ‘manager,’ who focuses on people and work.

“The intellectual’s world, unless counterbalanced by the manager, becomes one in which everybody ‘does his own thing’ but nobody achieves anything. The manager’s world, unless counterbalanced by the intellectual, becomes the stultifying bureaucracy of the ‘Organization Man.’ But if the two balance each other, there can be creativity and order, fulfillment and mission.”

In this edition of Drucker Apps, we invite you to join our conversation about how well we’re preparing today’s students for tomorrow’s jobs. Weighing in will be Edward Gordon, author of Winning the Global Talent Showdown: How Businesses and Communities Can Partner to Rebuild the Jobs Pipeline; Kimberly McWaters, CEO of Universal Technical Institute (UTI); Anthony P. Carnevale the Director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce; and others with insights into this subject.

We open things up with this question: Does the current education system give students the right tools to be both thinkers and doers—and, if not, what’s the solution?

Share

Tweet

Kimberly McWaters, President and CEO of Universal Technical Institute (UTI) — which trains professional automotive, diesel, motorcycle and marine technicians using a 50% theory and 50% lab practicum model — discusses one way to prepare students to be both thinkers and doers.

Share

Tweet

Edward Gordon, author of Winning the Global Talent Showdown: How Businesses and Communities Can Partner to Rebuild the Jobs Pipeline and founder of Imperial Consulting Corporation, comments on how schools are failing to equip students for  jobs in the “Cyber-Mental Age.”

Share

Tweet

“The entrepreneur upsets and disorganizes . . . his task is ‘creative disruption.’”

–Peter Drucker, Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Barnes & Noble, the nation’s largest bookseller, announced this month that it was putting itself up for sale—the victim of declining profits, which have resulted in large part from the rising popularity of electronic books.  Depending on what ultimately happens with Barnes & Noble’s own e-book reader, the Nook, the company is sure to find itself on one side or the other of Peter Drucker’s dictum: “innovate or die.”

Booksellers are hardly the first to be challenged by the “creative destruction” brought about by digital technology. The music and newspaper industries have faced similar tests—and largely failed. Survival often depends on how entrepreneurially these established players can respond. “Entrepreneurs see change as the norm and as healthy,” Drucker wrote. “Usually, they do not bring about the change themselves. But . . . the entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.”

In this edition of Drucker Apps, we invite you to join our conversation about creative destruction. Weighing in will be K.H. Moon, the former chief executive of Korean consumer products company Yuhan-Kimberly; Cecily Drucker, principal of Start-Up Strategies, a consulting firm, and the daughter of Peter Drucker; and others with insights into this topic.

We open things up with this question: Is your organization poised to be a creative destroyer, or is it more likely to be destroyed—and why?

Share

Tweet

How Drucker-like ideas are being put into action

When executives at Sun Microsystems (now part of Oracle) wanted to devise a new data storage system, they were intent on not just producing a slightly better version of what was already on the market. Rather, they aimed for a truly disruptive product. “We had to cost half as much and be twice as fast,” says Mike Shapiro, the executive who led the successful effort.

If you’ve ever turned any ideas from Drucker Apps into action by incorporating them into your life or work, please tell us your story.

Share

Tweet

Thanks to those of you who responded to our Drucker Apps reader survey. We greatly appreciate all the kind words that you shared. We’re also grateful for the constructive criticism.

One thing that we heard loud and clear was that we need to give you more ways to apply ideas. With that in mind, we’ve added a new feature, “The Practical Drucker.”

Share

Tweet

Rick Rasansky, tech entrepreneur and founder/CEO of YORN — which is redefining market research by using crowd-sourcing and social media to aggregate web and mobile users in near real-time — describes one of his early successes with creative disruption.

Share

Tweet

K.H. Moon, the former chief executive of Korean consumer products company Yuhan-Kimberly, describes the company’s near demise as larger global competitors took hold of the Korean market.

Moon, who now runs the New Paradigm Institute for Green & Responsible Competitiveness, explains in this follow-up interview how Yuhan-Kimberly, by listening to the advice of its go-to-market teams, was able to create a highly expedited product development cycle, rolling out new products in less than half the time of its competitors. This innovation ultimately allowed Yuhan-Kimberly to boost profits and reclaim its market share.

Share

Tweet

Cecily Drucker, principal of Start-Up Strategies, a consulting firm, and the daughter of Peter Drucker, describes the value of disruptive innovation beyond incremental innovation.

Share

Tweet

Drucker Apps rounds out this conversation with resources that will help you continue to explore the questions raised and discover how you can move from ideas to action.

• Drucker Societies around the globe are using Drucker’s core insights to create positive change in their local communities. Find out how you can join a Drucker Society.

• Rick Rasansky, tech entrepreneur and founder/CEO of YORN recommends:

1. Marc Levinson’s The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger about the way that Malcom McLean revolutionized global container shipping.
2. TechCrunch: a blog about new Internet products and companies.
3. ReadWriteWeb: a technology blog with daily Internet news and analysis.
4. MediaPost: a web resource for news on media, marketing and advertising.
5. A VC and @fredwilson: a tech venture capitalist who blogs about the latest in tech and Internet business.

• Drucker Institute Executive Director Rick Wartzman’s article Innovation Isn’t Just for Start-ups in Bloomberg Businessweek explores creative destruction and innovation within existing companies.

Further Drucker Reading

To read more from Peter Drucker on creative disruption and innovation, check out:

Innovation and Entrepreneurship, (Heinemann, 1985), especially Chapter 1, “Systematic Entrepreneurship.”

Landmarks of Tomorrow, (Harper, 1957), especially Chapter 2, “From Progress to Innovation.”

Management in the Next Society, (Butterworth Heinemann, 2002), especially Chapter 9, “Financial Services: Innovate or Die.”

Peter Drucker on the Profession of Management, (Harvard Business Review, 1985), especially Chapter 5, “The Discipline of Innovation.”

Drucker’s 1983 article for Forbes magazine, “Schumpeter and Keynes,”traces some of the foundations of his philosophy.

Share

Tweet