By Mr. Minglo Shao, Founder and Chairman of Bright China Group, a member of the Drucker Institute Board of Advisors and student of Peter Drucker at Claremont Graduate University
Good Morning, ladies and gentlemen, my respected Organizing Committee of the 2009 Drucker Centennial Conference, and friends of the Peter F. Drucker Society of Korea.I would like to first give my thanks to Mr. Seung-Woo Nan, Young-Chul Chang, MoonKook Hyun, Lee Eun Wook and my friends in the Drucker Society of Korea who invited my colleagues and myself to this great conference. I am both happy and honored to attend this event. On behalf of the Peter F. Drucker Academy in China and Hong Kong I bring my best wishes to the opening of this grand event and wish you every success in the next two days of activities.
Although this is the first time I visited your beautiful country, your culture andpeople has always captured my admiration and respect. This is not only due to your economic success and the creation of world-renowned brands like Samsung and Hyundai, nor just the meteoric success of your soccer team or the famous television drama series, Dae Jang Geum, that took the international TV scene bystorm.
More than 10 years ago when the Asian Financial storm hit, I saw in the media Korea’s women voluntarily line up in front of banks to donate or sell their lifelong savings of gold jewelry at low prices to support Korea’s financial institutions. I was very shocked and moved when I saw this. Later, living in Los Angeles my friends there told me there are a lot of Koreans opening restaurants there, but unlike other ethnic restaurants each Korean restaurantis opened in a location that does not compete with other Korean restaurants. It resulted in an optimal distribution of Korean restaurants in the city and as awhole; make Korean restaurants more competitive than other ethnic restaurants in the city.
These two seemingly unrelated examples illustrated the fact that your people have a strong sense of community, which give rise to a strong cohesive force. Therefore, when I witness your delegate’s strong team spirit in 2006’s Drucker Symposium held in Claremont and, through their introduction, learned about the Korean Drucker Society’s outstanding work, I was not the surprised. This is are flection of the sense of community that is rooted deeply in your traditional culture. Furthermore, it is consistent with the basic principles of Drucker’s knowledge, and this sense of community has helped the promotion of the Drucker Legacy. In turn, the promotion work itself also benefits and reinforces thesense of community, enabling it to gain and develop a new vitality.
From the successful planting of the Drucker Forest lead by Mr. Moon to the founding of you CEO Reading Club, all the way to the design of lifetime learning for your professionals and executives, your actions have renewed my colleagues andmy outlook and have given us encouragement and profound inspiration. If someone said that the Korean Drucker Society had played the role of a pioneer 3 years ago in Claremont in promoting the creation of a worldwide Drucker Society network by showing their work to the world, I would agree that this is a fair and appropriate statement. For this, we would like to thank the Korean DruckerSociety for their contribution to the promotion of the Drucker Legacy.
In the 3 years after 2006 many changes have taken place in Korea, Asia and the world. Some of them are major events such as the worldwide financial tsunami, which has far reaching consequences. Its impact and destructive power haselicited extensive reflection and contemplation in its wake. Some in Western countries have started to question the current financial system and even the viability of the free market system and capitalism. Some in China and Russia have advocated reverting to Marxism to counteract individualism that is based upon private ownership, requesting to re-enact fully, or in a large part, aplanned economy that is directed by the government.
At about the same time, Muhammad Yunus, a Bangladesh economist who has receivedthe Nobel Peace Prize, published his book, A World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism. In this book, he demonstrated to the world how to builda new kind of organization through his success in creating a bank that make microloans to the poor and a series of experiments on models of social enterprises. He gave a strict definition to the term “Social Enterprise” and further created the daring notion of a “Social Enterprise Capital Market” to supplement the shortcomings of the existing free market and capitalistic system.
From the West to the East, from developed countries to developing ones, and from discussions and explorations amongst practitioners to academics, all these will ultimately touch upon man’s quest in his basic values. As Drucker said, any objects created by man, be it structures, models, system or concepts, are bound to be imperfect by birth. It will fail or become an obstacle through time,which is precisely the reason for innovation and entrepreneurship. However, throughout history there will be something that stands the challenge of time. It is human’s quest for his own basic value, which is the foundation of the continued existence of the human society. The following are a few questions I would like to pose that relate to these values: What is the success pursued by individuals, organizations, and society? Are they the right kind of success? What is real innovation? Do you or your organization create value for others? As a professional, management, or leader who exerts influence on your enterprise or organization, what is your responsibility in coming up with the right answers to the above questions? In other words, what is your contribution to creating the value that you have defined?
When Wall Street investment bankers and fund managers introduced fascinating financial products and trading models and successfully attracted large amountsof capital from clients, many people have followed and praised this as a “financial innovation”. Now, these people and their followers have demonstrated through the consequences of their actions what a financial innovation is not about, nor have they created any value. Similar situations have taken place in other businesses, social sector, government, universities, and our business schools. Although the consequences are not as apparent as in Wall Street, the Financial Tsunami and problems in the financial system is but the tip of an iceberg that contains a host of problems in environment, society, politics, and people’s belief. These are proof of the many diseases of our world and represent a severe challenge for us to revert to men’s own basic value.
I think you will all agree that Drucker would ask us to answer this most important question and face up to this huge challenge. This is where his knowledge can help us. Also, this is precisely the reason and significance forour gathering today. In the coming two days I look forward to learning from my friends in the Korean Drucker Society again, their sharing of practices and thoughts with me and my colleagues, and all who attend this conference, so wecan all learn from your practical application and experience based on Drucker’sknowledge, just like what happened in Claremont three years ago.
Thank you again to you, my Korean friends. Thank you all.