True reinvention rarely begins with learning something new. It begins with letting go — of habits, assumptions, and routines that once delivered success but now constrain possibility. From IKEA to RELX, this article explores why deliberate unlearning is the overlooked discipline behind lasting organisational transformation.
When Michael Jordan stepped away from basketball in 1993 to pursue a professional baseball career, he wasn’t just changing sports — he was redefining what it means to start over. Jordan, at that time the world’s most dominant basketball player, found himself in a game that rewarded a completely different set of instincts. Basketball had trained his body for vertical leaps, explosive sprints, and the quick, reactive play of the court. Baseball demanded something else entirely — rotational power, lateral movement, and exquisite timing to hit a 90 mph fast ball. The very muscle memory that made him unbeatable in basketball initially undermined him on the baseball field. To progress, he first had to unlearn.
Jordan’s brief baseball chapter is a powerful metaphor for organizational life. Companies, like athletes, develop “muscle memory” — routines, assumptions, and mental models that once delivered excellence. But when the environment shifts, that same mastery can become a trap. Reinvention, in business as in sport, isn’t just about learning new skills or innovating around the edges. It’s about deliberately unlearning what once worked so well that it no longer allows you to see what’s possible.
The hidden half of change
In management theory, the concept of unlearning has long been overshadowed by its more optimistic sibling, learning. Pioneers like William H. (Bill) Starbuck and Bo Hedberg argued as early as the 1980s that organizations don’t fail to adapt because they lack intelligence — they fail because they are too successful at remembering. Old strategies, proven processes, and comfortable assumptions become deeply ingrained. Starbuck called for organizations to “unlearn” in order to avoid crisis — to let go of the obsolete mental maps that make them blind to new realities.
Unlearning isn’t forgetting in the casual sense. It’s a conscious, structured effort to abandon outdated knowledge. It’s recognizing that the frameworks that once brought competitive advantage may now distort judgment or block innovation. Where learning fills the mind, unlearning clears it. And the two together — the act of letting go and rebuilding anew — form the essence of reinvention.
Why reinvention is rarer than innovation
Innovation, for all its difficulty, starts from the comfort of existing capability. Reinvention starts from disorientation. It demands humility — a willingness to say that what made us great might now make us fragile. That is a rarer, and far braver, act. The Financial Times recently published the 2025 list of Reinvention Champions, which highlights some of those who navigated these challenges.*
Take IKEA, for instance. For decades, its mastery of flat-pack furniture defined the global furniture market. Yet as sustainability pressures mounted, IKEA had to rethink not just its product lines but its very business model — moving from a company that sells affordable furniture to one that rents, repairs, and recycles it. That pivot required unlearning more than it required invention. It meant challenging a decades-old identity: from selling ownership to enabling circulation.
Or consider RELX, the media and education group once known as Reed Elsevier. Its transformation from a traditional publisher into a data-driven analytics business wasn’t just about adopting new technologies. It required shedding the comforting but outdated assumptions of print publishing — that expertise lies in controlling content. In the digital age, RELX learned that value lies in enabling decisions through data, not distributing information through paper.
These companies illustrate a truth that scholars like Starbuck and Paul Nystrom observed: organizations don’t reinvent when they can change — they reinvent when they must. But those that succeed do so because they treat unlearning as a core discipline, not an accident of crisis.
The art — and pain — of deliberate unlearning
Unlearning often begins with discomfort. It starts when results plateau or when market signals no longer align with long-held beliefs. But unlike innovation — which tends to be celebrated — unlearning can feel like failure. It forces leaders and teams to question the very logic that once justified their existence.
The management literature shows how difficult this can be. Organizational routines are embedded not only in processes but in identity, culture, and reward systems. Even when a company intellectually accepts that change is necessary, emotionally and behaviourally it resists. That’s why reinvention is not only a technical challenge but a psychological one. It requires what some scholars call “double-loop learning”: questioning not only what we do, but why we do it.
In practice, unlearning takes different forms. Sometimes it’s structural — divesting old business units or abandoning legacy systems. Sometimes it’s cognitive — rethinking assumptions about what customers value or how performance is measured. And sometimes it’s personal — leaders themselves must change how they think about power, expertise, and success.
The power of deliberate unlearning can be seen in the bold choices of modern businesses. For example when, Synthesia, the AI video company, began automating video production, it didn’t just innovate within existing media paradigms; it challenged them. It forced clients — and even its own teams — to unlearn the notion that professional-grade video required cameras, studios, and crews. Reinvention, in this sense, is contagious: one actor’s unlearning triggers another’s.
The unique strength of the reinventors
Those who truly reinvent — be they athletes like Jordan or companies like IKEA and RELX — face a double challenge. They must master two opposing disciplines at once: the courage to erase and the creativity to rebuild. They are rare precisely because unlearning is harder than learning. It requires introspection, vulnerability, and an ability to exist temporarily in uncertainty.
Jordan didn’t become a baseball star, but his brief reinvention left a lasting lesson. When he returned to basketball, he came back with renewed discipline and perspective, leading the Chicago Bulls to three more championships. In his own way, he proved that unlearning isn’t the opposite of mastery — it’s the path to its renewal.
Organizations that wish to thrive in an era of constant disruption must learn that same art. Reinvention isn’t about adding more innovation teams or digital initiatives. It’s about cultivating the capacity to question one’s own history, to recognize when expertise becomes inertia.
The future belongs to those who can not only learn fast, but also unlearn faster.
Professor Dushnitsky served as a judge for the FT Reinvention Champions.
Gary Dushnitsky is Deputy Dean, Degree Programmes and Professor of Strategy & Entrepreneurship at London Business School. He serves as a Consulting Editor at the Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, and program chair of the SRF – Research in Strategic Management Grant Program.