What is your digital dilemma?

Bournemouth based, Chartered Accountant and business adviser, Nick Hixson, is ensuring local business challenges are at the centre of the agenda at the Global Drucker Forum 2015 in Vienna in November.

Nick Hixson of Hixsons Business Advisors is one of just three Peter Drucker Society Associates in the UK and a regular forum attender. The annual forum brings together top management thinkers from across the world, based on the legacy of Peter Drucker - ‘the man who invented management’.

This year’s forum theme is ‘Claiming our humanity - managing in the digital age’ and Nick has been asked to submit digital management challenges facing  SMEs for the world’s leading management gurus and academic thinkers to debate and propose strategies and solutions.

Nick Hixson says; “The Drucker forum focuses on matters of our time - through the forum I am able to access insights and strategies from global leaders in management that are relevant to local business. I have been invited to feed in digital issues that are facing SMEs for this year’s debate and I am canvassing my clients and the wider business community for their views on their biggest

challenges.”

Nick explains the thinking behind this year’s theme:

“The breathtaking advance of digital technology means we can now communicate worldwide at low cost, we can access news, opinions, books and information instantly. We can use technology to improve our productivity - managing vast amounts of data and we can access the talent and capabilities of individuals globally.  But, it also means customers are newly empowered to demand better, faster, cheaper, lighter, smaller, more personalised and convenient products – the issue for many businesses is simply how do they respond to these developments?”

 “The speed of ongoing digital developments will place further unprecedented challenges on businesses and individuals, as well as raising legal and ethical issues for both economies and local communities. The forum will be debating many of these issues. One question that clients are raising is how can we use technology, not to replace jobs, but enable our teams to use their capacity? Another well documented debate  surrounds ‘big data’ – it can provide  valuable analytical  tools for fact based decision making but also raises concerns for individuals such as privacy and real time monitoring.”

“There is also the development of ‘software bots’ with learning capabilities that promise to challenge human analytical intelligence and make autonomous decisions without necessarily incorporating human intuition – what impact will that have on us as individuals in the workplace?”

 

“What I am really interested in – are the digital issues that are effecting businesses locally, and how I can help put the spotlight on these issues and return with tangible strategies and solutions”.

Until the end of the April, Nick is able to submit issues and decisions facing the local business community. To put your thoughts forward, you can contact Nick by email: [email protected] .

 

What issues are currently being considered?

Some of the broader digital issues currently vying to make it onto the forum’s agenda are:

• How can we spawn a new age of entrepreneurship where innovation is powered by technology in creative ways, moving us beyond process, cost and efficiency management?
• What type of education and development would managers need to help create this new world? What should change?
• What are new ethical codes of conduct that institutions and organisations should adhere to?
• How do we help entrepreneurs so that they are not burdened by bureaucratic cost and efficiency management ideas?