This resonates with me with regard to software projects. Maybe the refactoring and/or innovation aversion I've seen in many software projects has to do mostly

This resonates with me with regard to software projects. Maybe the refactoring and/or innovation aversion I've seen in many software projects has to do mostly with this institutional knowledge the article talks about. It doesn'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.