Strategy, like markets, is anti-inductive. As Edward Luttwak says somewhere, “all success tends to failure”. When you win a battle or a war, your enemies and onlookers concerned that you may turn on them will learn from what you did, and look for counters, while you will be tempted to rely on what worked. But if you do that, you are attributing your success to the wrong place: on what you did instead of on the relationship between what you did and what your enemies did.
Harry hasn’t repeated himself yet: to all new challenges he has found new responses.
Sure, but I think it would be better to think of potion making at a very high level in strategy. Harry used transfiguration in battle after battle and managed to win. Do you think of that as not innovating? I think there is a similar relationship between ball bearings and skateboards and suits of armor in the transfiguration category and potion of sunlight and whatever comes next in the potion making category.
Strategy, like markets, is anti-inductive. As Edward Luttwak says somewhere, “all success tends to failure”. When you win a battle or a war, your enemies and onlookers concerned that you may turn on them will learn from what you did, and look for counters, while you will be tempted to rely on what worked. But if you do that, you are attributing your success to the wrong place: on what you did instead of on the relationship between what you did and what your enemies did.
Harry hasn’t repeated himself yet: to all new challenges he has found new responses.
Sure, but I think it would be better to think of potion making at a very high level in strategy. Harry used transfiguration in battle after battle and managed to win. Do you think of that as not innovating? I think there is a similar relationship between ball bearings and skateboards and suits of armor in the transfiguration category and potion of sunlight and whatever comes next in the potion making category.