I enjoyed this so much. The stories about Ford were terrific.
A lot of "wisdom" is contextual and gets mistaken for universal. We learn "X works" and, having been burned by everything else we tried, jealously guard the value of X as very special and precious.
Scars obtained in the process of obtaining expertise are likely an underrecognized factor in experts becoming ossified in their opinions. They learned that everything else bites and this doesn't. They don't want to get bit again.
Then conditions change and now nothing is guaranteed to work like it did before. It likely seems unfair to find their hard won wisdom is now irrelevant baggage.
Experts have done a lot of exploration and gained much experience, but just having abilities is nothing by itself. You need to exploit your abilities as well, employ them for good gain, and that takes time from exploration. Maybe you don't want to explore anymore because it's so good where you are at. This happened to Microsoft as well.
A lot of "wisdom" is contextual and gets mistaken for universal. We learn "X works" and, having been burned by everything else we tried, jealously guard the value of X as very special and precious.
Scars obtained in the process of obtaining expertise are likely an underrecognized factor in experts becoming ossified in their opinions. They learned that everything else bites and this doesn't. They don't want to get bit again.
Then conditions change and now nothing is guaranteed to work like it did before. It likely seems unfair to find their hard won wisdom is now irrelevant baggage.