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Breakthroughs Don't Pay
- wisty 15y agoOh, but Harry Potter was a breakthrough. It's a little of Roald Dahl's magical realism, a little boarding-school fiction, and a dash of Agatha Christie. I can't think of any other writer who tried to write a magical whodunnit for teens. OK, most of the parts are derivative. But so's a lot of Roald Dahl's stuff. According to wikipedia, he was influenced by Rudyard Kipling, William Makepeace Thackeray, Frederick Marryat and Charles Dickens; and the Norwegian fairy tales his mother (Sophia) told him. A genuine breakthrough is a small part. It can be a nice "secret sauce", and in some cases it can give you a competitive advantage. But a real hit needs lots of parts, and lots of work, not just a single breakthrough.
- jawgardner 15y agoThe point is, I think, the one you're making. If you think a breakthrough is going to make you rich, think again. Every product of the last decade that got people rich had very little that was genuinely new in it... so I think we agree.