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Article by Brent Sclender, Fortune, Jan 2004
The 94-year-old guru says that most people are
thinking all wrong about
jobs, debt, globalization, and recession.
You can always count on Peter Drucker to provide a new
way of looking at
things. After all, he is the man who first recognized
that management is a
discipline worthy of deep and formal study. Long
before anyone else-in the
early 1950s, no less-he predicted how computer
technology would one day
thoroughly transform business. In 1961 he presciently
called attention to
the rise of Japan as an industrial power, and two
decades later he warned of
its impending economic stagnation. And we can thank
him for coining the
concepts of "privatization," "knowledge workers," and
"management by
objective."
At 94, Drucker is still full of insights that seem to
elude others, and he
is as opinionated as ever. His interests range from
economics to psychology
to philosophy to opera to Japanese art; his
experiences include consulting
with literally hundreds of companies, governments,
small businesses,
churches, universities, hospitals, arts organizations,
and charities. To
this day, leaders of all stripes make the pilgrimage
to California to learn
from the master, who continues to lecture at the
management school that
bears his name at Claremont Graduate University.
Does the U.S. still set the tone for the world
economy?
The dominance of the U.S. is already over. What is
emerging is a world
economy of blocs represented by NAFTA, the European
Union, ASEAN. There's no
one center in this world economy. India is becoming a
powerhouse very fast.
The medical school in New Delhi is now perhaps the
best in the world. And
the technical graduates of the Institute of Technology
in Bangalore are as
good as any in the world. Also, India has 150 million
people for whom
English is their main language. So India is indeed
becoming a knowledge
center.
In contrast, the greatest weakness of China is its
incredibly small
proportion of educated people. China has only 1.5
million college students,
out of a total population of over 1.3 billion. If they
had the American
proportion, they'd have 12 million or more in college.
Those who are
educated are well trained, but there are so few of
them. And then there is
the enormous undeveloped hinterland with excess rural
population. Yes, that
means there is enormous manufacturing potential. In
China, however, the
likelihood of the absorption of rural workers into the
cities without
upheaval seems very dubious. You don't have that
problem in India because
they have already done an amazing job of absorbing
excess rural population
into the cities-its rural population has gone from 90%
to 54% without any
upheaval.
Everybody says China has 8% growth and India only 3%,
but that is a total
misconception. We don't really know. I think India's
progress is far more
impressive than China's.
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