> (and maybe that thousandth of a solution is only valuable in a path-dependent context with all the other solutions that leading company followed). Yeah, that

> (and maybe that thousandth of a solution is only valuable in a path-dependent context with all the other solutions that leading company followed). Yeah, that's a real obstacle, not much of a "maybe" about it. I have a feeling that this, more than any other factor, is what is driving large-scale international tech IP theft. You have to grab stuff wholesale in hopes of either (a) teasing out isolated nuggets that happen to be applicable to your own efforts, or (b) recreating the surrounding path-dependent context (which doesn't have a well-defined boundary) in order to have a working solution.