Businesses need open-minded, life-long learners

(Feb. 2024) Intellectual flexibility is in; dogmatic rigidity is out, says Richard Straub, Founder and President of the Global Peter Drucker Forum.

“Can you learn when you are an activist driven by dogmas?” he asked rhetorically, in an interview with Huawei Editor-in-Chief Gavin Allen at the latest Drucker Forum’s conclusion. “I don't see an activist as bad,” he went on. “But if the activist is driven by dogmas, it's not good…Because the key issue is then that there is no openness to learn, right? You need people who have a critical mind, who are not getting seduced by new ideologies which try to put your thinking into a box.”

Straub said that although technology can transform businesses, it is basic curiosity and openness to new ideas that are even more fundamentally important.

“In business,” he said, “you are tied to reality, you are not tied to ideology. You must survive in a real world that will punish you.”