---
title: "The Uniqueness Trap | Insights — Lyoen & Partners"
url: https://lyoenandpartners.com/insights/the-uniqueness-trap
description: "Harvard Business Review March-April 2025 (vol 103, issue 2, pp. 118-125) by Bent Flyvbjerg, Alexander Budzier, M.D. Christodoulou and M. Zottoli draws on…"
lang: en-US
---

Skip to content

Skip to main content

← Insights: https://lyoenandpartners.com/insights

Saturday, March 1, 2025strategy

# The Uniqueness Trap

Harvard Business Review March-April 2025 (vol 103, issue 2, pp. 118-125) by Bent Flyvbjerg, Alexander Budzier, M.D. Christodoulou and M. Zottoli draws on research over 1,300-plus projects to attack the "uniqueness trap": project managers believe their initiatives are one-of-a-kind because novelty wins support, yet few projects actually are unique. The perception of uniqueness leads to underestimated risk, poor decisions, and blown budgets and schedules. The cure: assume someone, somewhere has undertaken something like it; if no whole-project analogue exists, decompose the work into components and apply forecasting and risk-assessment tools to defeat the bias. Useful for SEA mid-market boards approving transformation and IT programmes.

Sources

Harvard Business Review (https://hbr.org/2025/03/the-uniqueness-trap)

Topic: Decision Quality: https://lyoenandpartners.com/insights/topic/decision-quality

## Structured data

```json
[
  {
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "@type": "WebSite",
    "name": "Lyoen & Partners",
    "url": "https://lyoenandpartners.com"
  },
  {
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "@type": "Organization",
    "name": "Lyoen and Partners Limited",
    "alternateName": "L&P",
    "url": "https://lyoenandpartners.com",
    "logo": "https://lyoenandpartners.com/apple-touch-icon.png",
    "description": "Fractional governance consulting and Board Operating System for mid-market CEOs and scale-up founders in Southeast Asia.",
    "foundingDate": "2024",
    "founder": {
      "@type": "Person",
      "name": "Sylvain Lyoen"
    },
    "address": {
      "@type": "PostalAddress",
      "addressLocality": "Wan Chai",
      "addressRegion": "Hong Kong"
    },
    "sameAs": [
      "https://www.linkedin.com/in/slyoen",
      "https://www.linkedin.com/company/lyoen-and-partners",
      "https://x.com/slyoen"
    ]
  },
  {
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "@type": "Article",
    "headline": "The Uniqueness Trap",
    "description": "Harvard Business Review March-April 2025 (vol 103, issue 2, pp. 118-125) by Bent Flyvbjerg, Alexander Budzier, M.D. Christodoulou and M. Zottoli draws on research over 1,300-plus projects to attack the \"uniqueness trap\": project managers believe their initiatives are one-of-a-kind because novelty wins support, yet few projects actually are unique. The perception of uniqueness leads to underestimated risk, poor decisions, and blown budgets and schedules. The cure: assume someone, somewhere has undertaken something like it; if no whole-project analogue exists, decompose the work into components and apply forecasting and risk-assessment tools to defeat the bias. Useful for SEA mid-market boards approving transformation and IT programmes.",
    "datePublished": "2025-03-01",
    "url": "https://lyoenandpartners.com/insights/the-uniqueness-trap",
    "author": {
      "@type": "Organization",
      "name": "Lyoen & Partners Limited"
    },
    "publisher": {
      "@type": "Organization",
      "name": "Lyoen & Partners Limited",
      "url": "https://lyoenandpartners.com"
    }
  },
  {
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "@type": "BreadcrumbList",
    "itemListElement": [
      {
        "@type": "ListItem",
        "position": 1,
        "name": "Home",
        "item": "https://lyoenandpartners.com/"
      },
      {
        "@type": "ListItem",
        "position": 2,
        "name": "Insights",
        "item": "https://lyoenandpartners.com/insights"
      },
      {
        "@type": "ListItem",
        "position": 3,
        "name": "The Uniqueness Trap",
        "item": "https://lyoenandpartners.com/insights/the-uniqueness-trap"
      }
    ]
  }
]
```