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Perhaps another way of packaging this is What vs How.

"What you do" very often cannot be a sustainable advantage. Perhaps in some contexts the advantage can be sustained long enough for it to matter, but not in any context with long enough timeframes.

"How you do it" can be sustainable when that how is embedded in culture, in ways of seeing, thinking, and doing.

If the How advantage is a holistic, systemic difference, copying components won't give the same results. Either you copy the whole thing, replacing what you already have or you come up with something of your own that is superior. Both of these are very difficult and take time.

A lot longer than it takes to copy a What.

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This piece seems disconnected from the wider news in the game. With the recent SCOTUS case and subsequent NCAA ruling, NIL is now here across the sports landscape. I don't know that Nebraska will have much of a first-mover advantage at all, but NIL is here to stay and jumping in head first to figure out how to leverage it to their advantage certainly makes sense.

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