Russell Ackoff

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Russell Ackoff (1919-2009) was Professor Emeritus of Management Science at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. This was despite remaining ambivalent about educational institutions in general and business schools in particular, once saying that:

"Business schools are high security prisons of the mind."

Ackoff quoted in Stern, 2009

The management pioneer Peter Drucker once wrote to Ackoff saying that his early work:

"saved me – as it saved countless others – from descending into mindless ‘model building’ – the disease that all but destroyed so many of the business schools."

Russell Ackoff