In Made to Stick, the authors propose the idea of the curse of knowledge as the reason why ideas fail and don’t stick. The central problem is that once we know something, we find it hard to imagine what it was like not to know it. And it becomes difficult for us to share our knowledge with others because we can’t re-create what others’ think or their state of mind.
For example, CEOs might have thirty years of knowledge of the business world. Reversing this knowledge is impossible — “you can’t unlearn what you already know”.
To beat this curse, they propose: first, not to learn anything; second, to take your ideas and transform them.