Wednesday, August 08, 2012
Planning Does Not Work
The first priority in talking about the public policies and
governmental measures needed in the entrepreneurial society is to define what
will not work - especially as the
policies that will not work are so popular today.
“Planning” as the term is commonly understood is actually incompatible with an
entrepreneurial society and economy.
Innovation does indeed need to be purposeful and entrepreneurship has to
be managed. But innovation, almost by
definition, has to be decentralized, ad hoc, autonomous, specific, and
microeconomic. It had better start
small, tentative, flexible. Indeed, the opportunities
for innovation are found, on the whole, only way down and close to events. They are not to be found in the massive
aggregates with which the planner deals of necessity, but in the incongruity,
in the difference between “the glass half full” and “the glass half empty,” in
the weak link in a process. By the time
the deviation becomes “statistically significant” and thereby visible to the
planner, it is too late. Innovative
opportunities do not come with the tempest but with the rustling of the breeze.
Peter Drucker, From Innovation and Entrepreneurship (1985)
Drucker was an amazing observer and as a result, amazingly prescient. Brilliant.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment