Why It’s Important to Learn, Unlearn and Relearn in Today’s Fast Times

We all need a jolt to continue innovating.

Let’s start with some statistics.

• Since 2013, the global internet population has grown nearly 47 percent, from 2.5 billion users in 2012 to 3.8 billion users in 2017.

And every minute,

• Google conducts 3,877,140 searches
• Uber users take 1,389 rides
• Amazon ships 1,111 packages
• YouTube users watch 4,333,560 videos
• Netflix streams 97,222 videos

It’s an understatement to say that today’s world is moving fast. New York Times columnist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Thomas Friedman, wrote about how the world has become a level playing field in his book, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century.

In it, Friedman described the perpetual shift required for countries, companies, and individuals to remain constantly competitive in an ever-growing global market where historical and geographical divisions are becoming increasingly irrelevant. Yet, unbelievably, Friedman wrote the book before Uber, Amazon, Facebook, and Twitter ever existed.

Today’s entrepreneurs and their employees are faced with a new requirement in today’s constantly changing and evolving business world: the ability to learn, unlearn, and relearn — fast! In honor of that, we hope these quotes give you a moment to breathe but also inspire you to move faster.

1. Every industry is primed for disruption. —Gary Vaynerchuk, CEO VaynerMedia
2. Move fast and break things. Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough. —Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO Facebook
3. Embrace what you don’t know, because what you don’t know can become your greatest asset.  —Sara Blakely, founder SPANX
4. Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough. —Elon Musk, CEO Tesla and SpaceX
5. We cannot change what we are not aware of, and once we are aware, we cannot help but change. —Sheryl Sandberg, author and COO Facebook
6. Change before you have to. —Jack Welch, CEO General Electric
7. Go invent tomorrow rather than worrying about what happened yesterday. —Steve Jobs, co-founder, CEO, Chairman Apple Inc.
8. Anyone who isn’t embarrassed by who they were last year probably isn’t learning enough. —Alain de Botton, author and television presenter
9. There’s lots of bad reasons to start a company. But there’s only one good, legitimate reason…to change the world. —Phil Libin, CEO Evernote
10. The fastest way to change yourself is to hang out with people who are already the way you want to be. —Reid Hoffman, co-founder LinkedIn
11. The ability to learn is the most important quality a leader can have. —Sheryl Sandberg, author and COO Facebook
12. I see life almost like one long university education that I never had. Every day I’m learning something new. —Richard Branson, founder Virgin Group
13. It’s very important to have a feedback loop where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better. —Elon Musk, CEO Tesla and SpaceX
14. The only way you survive is you continuously transform into something else. —Ginni Rometty, CEO IBM
15. People think innovation is just having a good idea but a lot of it is just moving quickly and trying a lot of things. —Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO Facebook
16. The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. —Alvin Toffler, writer and futurist
17. If we don’t change, we don’t grow. If we don’t grow, we aren’t really living. —Gail Sheehy, American author and journalist
18. When you’re finished changing, you’re finished. —Benjamin Franklin<