William A Cohen - Drucker on Marketing: Lessons from the Worlds Most Influential Business Thinker

Copyright 2013 by William A. Cohen. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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Part I
The Ascendancy of Marketing

Part II
Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Part III
Druckers Marketing Strategy

Part IV
New Product and Service Introduction

Part V
Druckers Unique Marketing Insights

P eter Drucker is widely acknowledged as the father of modern management. Occasionally, I have been carelessly called the father of modern marketing. If that is so, then Peter should be described as the grandfather of modern marketing.

Bill Cohen has done us a wonderful service by faithfully combing through Peter Druckers vast writings and weaving together Peters thoughts on marketing. This has never been done before. Peter did not write a systematic treatise on marketing, but nevertheless marketing was on his mind when he discussed the customer-driven purpose of a company, the role of profits and leadership, the critical importance of innovation and entrepreneurship, the need to identify and research opportunities, and so on. We owe it to Bill Cohen to have taken the various strands of Peters observations on all aspects of marketing and put them together in the 25 chapters of this fine book. Bill studied under Drucker and tells many stories that illustrate good or bad business thinking la Drucker. As a result Bill not only describes Peters insights and tells us many of Peters famous company engagements and observations but also adds wonderful illustrations from his own personal experiences that illustrate Peters thinking.

Peter Drucker has influenced many leaders in business, nonprofit organizations, and government, not to mention all the professors who pass on Druckers insights to new classes of business students. I had the privilege of knowing Peter personally and discussing ideas with him. I would like to share here my personal experience with him, as I did first at the Drucker Forum in Vienna during the Drucker Centennial in 2009.

Before I met Peter Drucker, I was an avid reader and admirer of his sage writings. Then one day, out of the blue, I received a call from a person with a German accent who said that he was Peter Drucker. Peter said that he was calling to invite me to visit him in Claremont, California, to spend a day together. In my mind, this was more exciting than a call from any other person I could imagine. We set a date, and I flew out to Claremont.

Peter and I found out that we shared a mutual interest in Japanese art. Peter collected Japanese scrolls and screens, and I collected Japanese netsukes and tsubas. When I landed in Claremont, our first stop was to visit Peters art gallery. Peter was not only a professor of management at Claremont College but also a professor of art. Claremont College gave him the use of a private gallery in which he could store and display his Japanese screens and scrolls. We spent the next few hours discussing the finer points of each Japanese scroll that he displayed. I learned a great deal from Peter about the Japanese aesthetic, which is quite different from the Western aesthetic. The Japanese bring a different set of conceptswabi and sabito understand and judge greatness in a work of art.

After the visit in the art gallery and a healthy lunch in a nearby restaurant, Peter and I went to his home. I met Peters wife Doris who is an accomplished physicist and who still plays a great game of tennis. I was surprised by the modesty of their home, especially knowing that Peter received in the same living room CEOs from many leading companies. Peter and Doris did not need any of the trappings of conspicuous consumption.

In the late afternoon, Peter took me to a recording studio near his home. Peter used this studio to do video conferences when he did not want to travel. (I remember attending a major management conference a few years later watching Peters face fill a giant screen and talking brilliantly to the delegates.) In the studio, Peter interviewed me about the role that marketing can play to help nonprofit organizations improve their performance. His questions were thought-provoking. I subsequently was inspired to undertake research into the museum world and the performing arts world to really answer his penetrating questions. The research resulted in my publishing two culture-oriented marketing books, namely