Unlearn: Let Go of Past Success to Achieve Extraordinary Results

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Unlearning with Business and Product Innovation

I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.—John Cage

As with business and product innovation, unlearning also requires constraints to challenge us to think and act differently. The NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT) in the United Kingdom is the most expensive software project failure in history, costing £12.4 billion before it was scrapped in 2011 (the original budget was £2.3 billion). Members of Parliament described NPfIT as “the worst and most expensive contracting fiasco” ever. (In fact, some officials have claimed that the final cost was as high as £20 billion since commencing in 2002.)

The NPflT was intended to transform healthcare services ...