Scientific Definition
Prior solutions block better new ones.
Plain-English Definition
Prior solutions block better new ones.
Feynman Explanation
You're so good at your hammer that everything looks like nails.
Core Principle
Prior solutions block better new ones.
Mechanisms
Prior solutions block better new ones.
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Inputs (Triggers)
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Outputs (Behaviors)
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Behavioral Signature
You're so good at your hammer that everything looks like nails.
Examples
- A McKinsey alum solves every problem with a McKinsey framework.
- Pattern expertise becomes pattern blindness.
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Famous Experiments
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Design Principles
- Mandate clean-sheet alternatives before defaulting to known solutions.
Measurement Approaches
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Evidence
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The Perverse Incentive Lens™
How this behavior is exploited — and how to redesign around it.
- Mandate clean-sheet alternatives before defaulting to known solutions.
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Interactive Mini Network
Click any neighbor to re-center the graph and follow the threads of connection.
Knowledge Graph Neighbors
Auto-linked to the rest of the Human Behavior Taxonomy by family, domain, dimension, and shared keywords.
People look better in groups than as individuals.
Familiarity breeds approval.
Perceiving meaningful connections in unrelated things.
Seeing patterns in random data.
Seeing things only in their conventional use.
Bad lands harder than good.
Adding a clearly worse option steers people toward the option you wanted.
Whatever is pre-selected wins more often than it should.
We value things more once they're ours.
The same information lands differently depending on how it's wrapped.
We overvalue things we built ourselves.
Doing something feels safer than doing nothing — even when nothing wins.