Business 2.0 interview with Peter Drucker. What makes Drucker seem so damn wise (and he is), is his enormous and tight grasp on history. Almost every question he's asked, he responds with historical examples to illustrate his answer. Some highlights from this interview:
Good stuff.
- Many of the newer Internet companies are struggling to keep their businesses afloat. What are they doing wrong? Drucker: "I don’t think they are doing anything wrong. They’re just not doing anything right....Many of these Internet startups were not startups of business, at all. They were just stock exchange gambles."
- "Typically, the speculative boom precedes the growth of the real businesses by 10 years....The great English railroad boom in the 1830s led to a collapse of many of the first companies in the early 1840s. After that, railroad building began in earnest." Do you think it will take a decade before we see the real champions of the New Economy emerge? "Yes."
- Any thoughts on the Microsoft antitrust trial? "...A power that has hegemony always becomes arrogant. Always becomes overweened. And always unites the rest of the world against it. A countervailing power always reacts. A hegemonous system is very self-destructive. It becomes defensive, arrogant, and a defender of yesterday. It destroys itself. Therefore no monopoly in history lives for very long....So I think the best thing that could happen to Microsoft is to be broken up into several pieces. I do not think Bill Gates would agree with me, but then Mr. Rockefeller did not agree either."
- "It is very tempting to manage only for the short term, but very dangerous....[Jack Welch] gets monthly reports on each of his 167 businesses, I am sure, but he makes people investments for seven years ahead."
- "Is this new thing a genuine change, or simply a fad? And the difference is a very simple: A change is something people do, and a fad is something people talk about. An enormous amount of talk is a fad."
Good stuff.