SAN DIEGO--Don't let the fact that Peter Drucker is 91 fool you. In his opening keynote Monday at the Delphi Group's Collaborative Commerce Summit, the management consulting legend and prolific author had plenty of pertinent things to say on the topics of business processes and the role of technology in the modern company.

You could've heard a pin drop as the audience of several hundred tired to glean a few doses of wisdom that their companies could use. John Archer, senior architect for SilverStream Software Inc., latched on to a couple of Drucker's tidbits: that technology has primarily affected business operations, but is just now beginning to affect strategy; and that trust is a central issue in making the most of organizational knowledge.

Archer says Drucker's theory on technology's impact on business serves as a validation of a tool SilverStream is building to help companies manage their strategic business processes. But it's Drucker's viewpoint that workers shouldn't be managed so much as entrusted to do the most with their knowledge that Archer says he'll take back to the company. "We're all here for the same purpose," Archer says, and thus employees must trust each other with information.

Such individual accountability is key, says Drucker, who scoffs at the notion of knowledge management. "You can't manage knowledge," he says. "Knowledge is between two ears, and only between two ears." To that extent, Drucker says it's really about what individual workers do with the knowledge they have. When employees leave a company, he says, their knowledge goes with them, no matter how much they've shared.