nonlinear

It took me way too long to get turned onto the work of Peter F. Drucker. An amazing read on leadership today … one that’s no-doubt familiar to the economist but not as readily known as should be.

Some noteworthy quotes

Management … will increasingly have to be based on the assumption that neither technology nor end-use is a foundation for management policy. They are limitations. The foundations have to be customer values and customer decisions on the distribution of their disposable income

In a declining industry one has to manage, above all, for steady, systematic, purposeful “cost reduction” and for steady improvement in “quality” and “service,” that is, for strengthening the company’s position within the industry, rather than for growth in volume … products in a declining industry tend to become “commodities”

And my favorite quote, which I’ve used before: Again and again in business history, an unknown company has come from nowhere and in a few short years has overtaken the established leaders without apparently even breathing hard. The explanation always given is superior strategy, superior technology, superior marketing, or lean manufacturing. but in every single case, the newcomer also enjoys a tremendous cost advantage, usually about 30 percent. The reason is always the same: the new company knows and manages the costs of the entire economic chain rather than its costs alone

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