Management visionary Peter Drucker dies at 95

The preeminent business philosopher, Peter Drucker, died last Friday at the age of 95.  Harvard Business Review called him the father of modern management and he published more than 40 books over 60 years, including The Practice of Management in 1954, and continued to write, contribute, and consult well in to his 90s.  Drucker challenged business and labour leaders to find ways to give workers more control over their work environment.  He also argued that governments should turn many functions over to private enterprise. 

 

Many of us will have read his ideas and words, but I am indebted to Phil Wainewright for his piece on ZDNet where he talks about a prophetic 1996 interview Drucker did for Wired magazine. In it he likened the IT industry to the birth of the printing industry in the 15th century, where the early printers became great stars as the industry flourished.  Later in the next century though, these men who focused on the technology had become mere craftsmen, and the emphasis and plaudits had shifted to what we now call publishers.  Wainewright goes on:

"This is the historical precedent for what we now see happening in IT with the emergence of on-demand services, in which the emphasis passes from those who sell software and the tools to run software (Microsoft, Oracle, IBM) to those who sell new views on data and information (Google, Amazon.com, Salesforce.com and hundreds of other on-demand providers).  It's not the technology that matters, it's what you do with it that counts."

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