Leadership Quote by John Naisbitt

A tidy sentence that smuggles in a whole ideology: management is the past, entrepreneurship is the future, and resistance is basically a failure of imagination. Naisbitt frames the shift as historical drift rather than political choice. “We are shifting” is passive, almost meteorological, implying inevitability. It’s a rhetorical move that lets the speaker sound like a neutral trend-watcher while nudging listeners toward a specific set of values: speed over stability, risk over procedure, disruption over stewardship.

The contrast between “managerial” and “entrepreneurial” also works as a morality play. “Managerial society” evokes bureaucrats, middlemen, and institutions that optimize rather than create. “Entrepreneurial society” flatters the audience with the promise of agency: you, not the system; initiative, not permission. It recasts economic insecurity as opportunity and turns the dismantling of long-term employment norms into a narrative of liberation. Subtext: if you’re struggling, the problem isn’t the structure, it’s your mindset.

Context matters. Naisbitt’s career peaked alongside late-20th-century shifts: deregulation, globalization, the rise of the service economy, and the early tech boom that made “startup logic” feel like common sense. Corporate America also began importing entrepreneurial language to justify leaner organizations and constant restructuring. The line functions as both diagnosis and sales pitch: a future where everyone must behave like a founder, even when they’re just being asked to absorb more risk with fewer guarantees.