P2 The Blog

Soon after the financial meltdown of 2008, and the collapse of hundreds of companies, I suggested that a recession might be the best time to invest in people – impart new skills, new ways of approaching problems, and new algorithms for value creation. A recent article by Gary Burnison of global HR firm Korn Ferry forces me to revisit the topic. A significant number of CEOs seem to believe that humans are increasingly becoming irrelevant . Burnison notes: “More than two-thirds (67%) of 800 CEOs of large corporations believe that technology will create more value in the future than people . Nearly half think that robotics, AI, and automation will make people “ largely irrelevant ” in the future of work. In a rank order of an organization’s top five assets , humans didn’t make the list at all : technology, innovation, product/service, brand, and real estate were the top five assets listed.” At the turn of the century, mobile phones were not as ubiq

So much has been written about leadership and entrepreneurship that one wonders whether anything new is possible. Apparently, yes. In their forthcoming book, Chris Kuenne and John Danner identify four distinct entrepreneur personality types. More importantly, they try to establish relationships between personality types and business success (or failure). The authors have used a patented analytic methodology ( Personality Based Clustering ) to arrive at their conclusions. Drivers – are entrepreneurs who could just not be anything else. They are passionate about products/services and the markets/segments they serve. They have an intense focus on product/service characteristics and will not settle for anything but the best. Drivers do not like the complexity of launching new ventures, and assume that “the rest of the world will eventually catch up with their wisdom.” Steve Jobs is a near-perfect example of a driver. His attention to aesthetic des