William Starbuck, professor emeritus at New York University and Courtesy Professor in Residence at Lundquist College of Business at the University of Oregon, presented his work on organizational unlearning. Starbuck began with a historical overview. Prior to the 1950s, nobody thought of the idea that organizations could learn. As scholars began to study organizational learning, they (perhaps naively) assumed that it was a good thing; that learning meant the firm would do better in the future. Study after study showed that it was instead a mixed bag; learning both helps and hurts. Then in the 1970s and 1980s, scholars began...