I read Peter F. Drucker’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship this month. I was looking for a good overview of innovation in technological fields. I’ve been interested in startups and high-tech companies for a few years now, but most of what I’d read was very specific advice, and not an overview of the field and how innovation works in general.
I chose Drucker’s book because I’d heard good reviews of his management and economic advice. After finishing the book, I did a bit more research on Drucker as a person. His Wikipedia entry is pretty interesting. He seems like he was an interesting and insightful guy. It probably helps that his economic and political opinions align pretty well with my own.
The book was great, but it had a much different perspective on innovation than I expected. Drucker focuses on innovation in a variety of industries, not just high tech. He definitely support high tech innovation, but he states that it’s riskier and more difficult than innovation in other areas. I found this passage from the conclusion especially poignant.
High tech […] is only one area of innovation and entrepreneurship. The great bulk of innovations lies in other areas. But also, a high-tech policy will run into political obstacles that will defeat it in short order. In terms of job creation, high tech is the maker of tomorrow rather than the maker of today. […] High Tech in the United States created no more jobs in the period 1970-85 than “smokestack” lost: about five to six million. All the additional jobs in the American economy during that period, a total of 35 million, were created by new ventures that were not high-tech but middle-tech, low-tech, or no-tech.
The book is engaging, but reads like a bunch of lists of how to succeed as an innovative entrepreneur. Drucker lists the areas that you can innovate in, ways to achieve innovation, and ways to succeed as an innovative company. These lists are interspersed with a lot of advice and a few case studies. The advice all seems useful, and after finishing the book I was left with the opinion that this would be a good book to come back to over the next few years to re-read those parts that were especially insightful.