The Drucker Institute recently gave a new name for, and a new twist to the nonprofit innovation award it gives annually. What’s now called the Drucker Prize will still award $100,000 to the winning nonprofit organization, and the 2016 prize applications are now open. The new twist is a special learning platform that will be available to applicants. According to the Institute’s website, it “blends the timeless wisdom of Peter Drucker with the thinking of some of today’s brightest management minds.” The 2015 prize winner was Kids v Cancer.

The Institute remains a rich source of knowledge about Peter Drucker, especially through the extensive holdings of the Drucker Archives.

On April 8th, I had the honor of receiving the Roger Summit Award, from the Association of Independent Information Professionals/AIIP, at its 30th Annual Conference, in Pittsburgh. Roger is a pioneer of the online information world, as founder of Dialog, the world’s first online search service. (It is now a platform within the global information company ProQuest, and called ProQuest Dialog.) As part of the award, I delivered the Roger Summit Lecture that morning, “Creating a Compelling Future: Business and Beyond.”

Roger, who has long been based in Silicon Valley, participated in this year’s conference, including introducing me for the lecture and then in a nice surprise, announcing after I finished that for the first time, the award winner would also receive a one year’s membership in AIIP.

Placing freelance articles in high-quality, selective publications is difficult. That makes Peter Drucker’s status as a freelance writer particularly impressive. Although he wrote a number of books that sold millions of copies worldwide, for many years he kept up a demanding regimen of writing a column for the Wall Street Journal, many articles for the Harvard Business Review, and major pieces for such publications as the Atlantic, Forbes, Harper’s and others. And as I wrote about in 2013, he did some fascinating foreign correspondent work for The Washington Post in 1938.

Courtesy of the Drucker Institute

Perhaps the best way to get a sense of the breadth of these contributions is to look at the sources for some of his book collections:

Classic Drucker: Essential Wisdom of Peter Drucker from the Pages of Harvard Business Review

The Ecological Vision: Reflections on the American Condition: articles from Public Interest, Perspectives, Harper’s, The Review of Politics, Esquire, Forbes, Virginia Quarterly Review, Sewanee Review, Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal and other publications

The Frontiers of Management: Where Tomorrow’s Decisions Are Being Shaped Today: articles from Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal, Esquire, Forbes, Foreign Affairs, The Public Interest, Chronicle of Higher Education and other publications

Managing for the Future: the 1990s and Beyond: articles from The Economist, Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Industry Week and other publications

Managing in a Time of Great Change: articles (or interviews) from Atlantic Monthly, Foreign Affairs, Industry Week, Wall Street Journal and other publications

Managing in the Next Society: articles from The Economist, Forbes ASAP, Foreign Affairs, Atlantic Monthly, Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal, Leader to Leader, New Perspectives and other publications

Men, Ideas & Politics: Essays by Peter F.

These are exciting times at The Drucker School, of the Claremont Graduate University; with new initiatives, online rebranding and a physical expansion. I wrote about some of these changes, including the appointment of new Dean Thomas Horan, when I was in Claremont, California for Drucker Day last November.

Jenkins Courtyard outside of the Burkle building, at The Drucker School; Courtesy of Claremont Graduate University

While the school continues to honor and extend the legacy of its founder and namesake Peter Drucker, it is growing by meeting and anticipating the needs of current and future MBA students worldwide.

Peter Drucker often referenced religion and spiritual matters in his writing, and both were important parts of his life and the way he looked at the world. He taught religion during the 1940s at Bennington College in Vermont, and set one of his two novels, 1984’s The Temptation to Do Good, in a fictional Catholic University.

In chapter 5 of Create Your Future the Peter Drucker Way, I write more extensively about the Drucker religion/spirituality connection. There are a number of scholarly articles on the topic (several of which I reference in the book), and the role of religion and the spiritual are covered in depth in two books by Drucker’s longtime collaborator, friend and fellow Drucker School professor, Joseph A.

Although Peter Drucker only used the word revolution once in a book title (The Unseen Revolution; 1976; reissued as The Pension Fund Revolution in 1996); he often used the term, especially in essays and article titles.

While not meant to be exhaustive, here is a brief guide to Drucker’s writing with revolution in the title:

“Beyond the Information Revolution”: The Atlantic 1999

“The Conservative Counter-Revolution of 1776”: chapter in The Future of Industrial Man, 1942; and the collection A Functioning Society: Selections from Sixty-five Years of Writing on Community, Society, and Polity, 2003.

“The Educational Revolution”: subsection 1 of the chapter “The Educated Society”; Landmarks of Tomorrow: A Report on the New “Post-modern” World, 1959; revised edition, 1996.

It’s always fun writing about end-of-year best business books lists. These ten showcase a number of terrific books, although it’s sobering to think about the many other worthy titles published this year that did not get year-end recognition. How many of the listed books have you read, and how many do you plan to read in the coming year?

Amazon.com: 2015 Best Books of the Year: Business & Investing

Business Insider: The 20 Best Business Books of 2015

CBC News: 9 notable business books for your Christmas gift list

800 ceoread: The 2015 800-CEO-READ Business Book Awards Shortlist

Fast Company: The 10 Best Business and Productivity Books of 2015

Forbes: 15 Best Business Books of 2015

The Globe and Mail: Top 10 leadership and management books of 2015

Holy Kaw!/Alltop: Top 100 Business Books of 2015

Inc.

Many of Peter Drucker’s books include references to future-oriented topics. There is a four-page selected reader’s guide to these writings in my book Create Your Future the Peter Drucker Way. I’ve adapted that section for this streamlined guide to some of the books that will help you navigate the future most successfully:

The Age of Discontinuity: Guidelines to our Changing Society (1969): This is about the broad changes Drucker identified that were happening in society at the end of the turbulent decade of the 1960s, as exemplified by the title to Chapter 1: “The End of Continuity.”

The Drucker Lectures (2010): The final chapters are “The Future of the Corporation,” Parts 1-4, from lectures given in 2003 at the Claremont Graduate University.

On November 14, the Drucker School’s Drucker Day returned to the Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California for the first time in two years. (In 2014, it was held in Tokyo.) The day honors Peter Drucker, the school’s founder, and is a magnet for alumni and friends of the school, and always great for networking. I’ve written about my experiences there often, including in 2013, when I did a book signing for Create Your Future the Peter Drucker Way. The theme this year was “The Creative Organization: Preparing & Managing Top Talent,” an extension of the 2013 theme, “The Creative Economy: Where Managers and Creatives Collaborate to Foster Innovation and Economic Value.”

Photo by Tom Zasadzinski

There was a sense of new beginnings and reinventions at the latest event, partially through the re-energizing of the school’s alumni, but also through the promise of the new academic programs based around the creative economy/organizations, and the opening remarks of the new Dean of the school, Tom Horan.

November 11, 2015 marks the ten-year anniversary of Peter Drucker’s death. Yet the ideas and influence of Drucker, who lived to be 95, remain as strong and influential as ever.

The activity centered around and honoring Drucker’s life and work remains highly admirable and meaningful. Last week, November 5-6, was the 7th Global Drucker Forum, in Vienna, Austria; from the Drucker Society Europe. It has become a major event in the world of management, featuring top leaders/thought leaders from around the world.

Drucker’s work continues to be amplified by the Drucker Institute and the Drucker School, both in Claremont, California.