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Peter Drucker
22 May 2003 by AL
Ive been a big Peter Drucker fan for a long time. The “Godfather of Modern Management” is in his 90s and hes still at it. Amazing. He was one of the few who recognized early on that Germany was on the road to destruction in the late 30s and got out before the unspeakable happened. He always had a knack for being able to tell the future, and in this (older) interview he again hits it on the nose about the internet and our society. Theres a lot to be said for wisdom that comes with age; respect.
“The cultural impact of the Internet is far greater than the economic one. The important effect is on the middle classes in these half-developed countries. They don’t see themselves as part of their economy, but as part of the worldwide developed economy. This may be the next development: the emergence of psychologically global middle classes.
The Internet is also forming new communities. The engineer whose specialty is bonding materials and plastics, his community is a few hundred engineers spread worldwide, but they are probably in contact every day. The economic impact is probably the least important. The social impact is the most important.”
8 comments so far (Post a Comment)
23 May 2003 | Darrel said...
While I agree, I can't say that is a very profound observation.
23 May 2003 | hurley#1 said...
The Internet is also forming new communities
And those communities are in many cases forming new marketplaces, which I think does have an economic impact. Drucker would probably agree today (I know the interview you linked to is a few years old)
Look at eBay, for example. And beyond eBay there are lots of less formal marketplaces, such as special-interest newsgroups, boards, and Web sites where people can buy and sell things much more efficiently than they could do locally. Stuff that used to sit gathering dust in your attic for decades suddenly has value. "Who would want it?" you used to ask. Now, it's more like "Hm, I wonder how much I could get for this on eBay?"
23 May 2003 | alisha said...
I disagree that ebay has made an economic impact on the world. For Ebay employees, yes, for the world, no. But I understood Drucker meant that the economic impact is less important than the social one.
23 May 2003 | hurley#1 said...
According to Forbes:
EBay touts itself not as an online auction house but as a community "made up of a variety of people: individual buyers and sellers, small businesses and even [large] companies." With a population of 62 million users trading goods and services that generated revenue of $1.5 billion for the company last year, this eBay nation has an economy that's already equal to a Central American economy--and the numbers are moving north.
To me, that seems fairly significant.
24 May 2003 | alisha said...
it sure does. thanks for the quote. do you know of any other facts and figures which prove that the internet has had strong economic impact Hurley?
25 May 2003 | hurley#1 said...
The OECD does an annual status report on the "information and communications technology sector." The most recent report (published in 2002 and based on data from the year 2000) indicates that this sector accounted for about 10 percent of the business sector's GDP in OECD member countries in the year 2000.
E-commerce is still a pretty small part of the economic impact of the internet -- in 2000 it was accounting for much less than 1% of business sales in most OECD countries. It's undoubtedly grown a bit since then, but in general the economic impact of the Internet is going to be much bigger than just e-commerce.
I guess I don't disagree with Drucker, it's just that what's "more important" or "less important" is a subjective thing and thus debatable. It depends on your perspective; there's no universal measure of importance. I think there's evidence that the Internet is having an important economic impact as well as a large social impact, and that the two are intertwined in many cases.
26 May 2003 | alisha said...
cool - thanks for the link.
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I guess I don't disagree with Drucker, it's just that what's "more important" or "less important" is a subjective thing and thus debatable.
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Im just so impressed when an old guru like Drucker compares the internet to the railroad or telephone and says things like "yea, the telephone had a bigger impact..." I mean talk about wide lens perspective.
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I think there's evidence that the Internet is having an important economic impact as well as a large social impact, and that the two are intertwined in many cases.
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I think thats more the case because I observe it in my own life and others who I work with.
02 Nov 2003 | ebay business said...
gotta love blog spam
