Team reflexivity and stress are two important factors that can have a major impact on unlearning and innovation in new product development teams. Unlearning is defined as the process of discarding old ideas or methods of working in order to adapt to new ways, while innovation involves the introduction of novel products or services. As technology rapidly evolves, it has become increasingly necessary for companies to be able to rapidly adjust their strategies and approaches in order to remain competitive which requires these organizations to embrace innovative practices (Lam et al., 2019). In this way, team reflexivity and stress can influence how well a team is able to unlearn outdated processes and adopt new ones during the product development process.

Team reflexivity refers to a team’s ability to reflect on its overall performance and make changes based on their observations (McClelland et al., 2017). A reflective team is more likely than an unreflective one, to challenge assumptions and question existing practices in order to come up with better solutions. The presence of high levels of stress within a team can interfere with the members’ ability think critically about their work because they may be overwhelmed by tasks instead of being open minded about them (Shen & Wang, 2020). For example, if deadlines are looming for a project but management isn’t providing essential tools or resources needed then the entire team will suffer from higher levels of stress due lack of resources which could limit innovative thinking when trying find creative solutions for problems that arise during product development.