Should businesses always look ahead and forget about the past?

The ability to look ahead is an essential quality for any business manager or owner.  Since change is omnipresent in the modern business world, companies are required to follow and adapt to change, if they wish to survive. 

Change and progress work together in pushing things ahead, presumably making the world a better place. Those organizations that fail to keep up with change and progress, stay behind and are doomed to end up filing for bankruptcy and ceasing their operations.

Image originally uploaded by Jeremy Bronson on Flickr.com and reused under Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) Creative Commons License 

I am sure that you are familiar with the above ideas about how change and progress are inevitable facts that every business should come to terms with, if it wishes to continue operating. 

What about the past then? Should it be erased once and for all? The fact the companies keep records for a considerable time, as required by law, makes it impossible to forget the past and start from scratch. 

Although past experience may not always be viewed in a positive light, it can be of great help when it comes to avoiding the same mistakes, even if it’s mostly negative. 

In fact, negative past experience can be extremely valuable, since it can provide the necessary lessons of wisdom and knowledge, which would not be possible to find anywhere else. 

Experience pays. That’s for sure.