One of the most difficult critical skills to describe, and to develop skill in, is ‘Unlearning.’ In order to do something new we often need to unlearn what we think we already know. Unlearning is not only hard to describe, it is hard to do. We suggest a few techniques for unlearning that may be helpful.

Deep knowledge and specialization are an important part of expertise. But sometimes the expert knowledge acts like blinders. One of the best ways to overcome this is by combining ideas from different disciplines to come up with a new solution. This is the critical skill of ‘concept blending.’