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.