continuous learning

a good quote, from Innovation and Entrepreneurship by Peter Drucker.

individuals will have to learn new things well after they have become adults – and maybe more than once. what individuals have learned by age twenty one will begin to become obsolete five to ten years later and will have to be replaced – or at least refurbished – by new learning, new skills and new knowledge.

individuals will increasingly have to take responsibility for their own continuous leaning and relearning, for their own self-development and for their own careers. they can no longer assume that what they have learned as children and youngsters will be the "foundation" for rest of their lives. it will be the "launching pad" – the place to take off from rather than the place to build on and to rest on. they can no longer assume that they "enter upon a career" which then proceeds along a pre-determined, well-mapped and well-lighted "career path" to a known destination. the assumption from now on has to be that individuals on their own will have to find, determine, and develop a number of "careers" during their working lives.