This resonates with me with regard to software projects.<p>Maybe the refactoring and&#x2F;or innovation aversion I&#x27;ve seen in many software projects has to do mostly with this institutional knowledge the article talks about.<p>It doesn&#x27;t matter how crappy a project is or how many defects the team agrees a project has... introducing a different solution is seen as prohibitively risky or costly, given the amount of time people has spent learning and putting in place workarounds.