ISJ October 2019: Who is Rethinking International Education?

Terry Haywood

Business leaders have been brought up for decades on a mantra that Google search engines trace back to an observation by Lauren Bacall: “standing still is the fastest way of moving backwards”. Bacall’s expression is often used as a warning, as in “your performance will go into reverse if you don’t continually rethink what you are doing to renew and future-proof your business practices!” – And history bears witness to the validity of this warning. We can all recite examples of major corporations and entire sectors that have gone into decline, sometimes terminally, because of their failure to respond to the impact of new technology or the evolution of market tastes and references. At the same time, Bacall’s mantra points to an essential attribute that aspiring entrepreneurs must cultivate, that of identifying windows of opportunity for new products and services, including those that cater for “needs” that have not been envisaged previously. Truly successful innovators and entrepreneurs continually turn around their business activities to keep them abreast of evolving market trends, even at the cost of terminating popular product lines to which the public seems sentimentally attached. These are leaders who have no place for complacency, who do not stand still, and who think and move forwards, not backwards.