Russell Lincoln Ackoff (12 February 1919 – 29 October 2009) was an American organizational theorist, consultant, and Anheuser-Busch Professor Emeritus of Management Science at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Ackoff was a pioneer in the field of operations research, systems thinking and management science.

Dr. Russell Ackoff lectures on improvement efforts that go beyond improving the parts of a system to improving the whole. A marvelous explanation of why most improvement efforts are "anti-systemic" and why this causes them to fail. This lecture was given at the College of Business Administration at the University of Cincinnati on May 2, 1995