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Prologue: Unlearning
What’s Untrue
The most useful piece of learning for the uses of life is to unlearn what is
untrue.
—Antisthenes (445–365 BCE)
BARRIERS TO CREATIVITY
In the world of innovation, we run into two kinds of barriers. Some of them
we call hard, the other soft. Hard barriers are resource related. They feel like
externally imposed limits on what can be done given the circumstances. By
contrast, soft barriers are constraints of our minds. They are difcult to over-
come because we do not see them as barriers in our own thinking. A lot of
what we learn about invention and creativity through formal education and
professional train