The End Of The Drucker Era

Peter Ferdinand Drucker is dead. In an obituray WSJ wrote, Mr. Drucker invented management - not as a practice, but as a field of study. It was he who first asked managers to decentralize their operations and treat their employees like humans - in the 1940s. The concept of "knowledge work" is his coinage, from the 1950s. Business Week magazine has hailed Mr. Drucker as "the most enduring management thinker of our time," and Forbes magazine featured him on its cover in 1997 under the headline: "Still the Youngest Mind." He was dubbed by Wired magazine as the "arch-guru of capitalism." In a 1999 Wall Street Journal opinion piece,Joan Magretta and Nan Stone wrote: "Before Peter Drucker, most people thought about their businesses with a manufacturing mindset, defining a business based on what it produced. Today, the marketing mindset prevails. It was Mr. Drucker's critical insight that instead of buying a 'product' the customer buys the satisfaction of a need." It is indeed an end of an era - future shall never see a person of his stature, insights, depth & range of thinkings and hardwork.