The world no longer holds still long enough to be studied.

Companies are no longer static objects you analyse once and understand for a decade.

Consider banking in the UK. For a century, from 1870 to 1970, your local branch ran almost identically: the same teller windows, the same ledgers hardening into filing cabinets. Your grandfather’s banking experience in 1920 was, in every way that counted, the same as yours in 1970. Then came the ATM. Then, telephone banking with the revolutionary First Direct. Then online. Now? Revolut adds crypto trading, Monzo ships budgeting AI, and the high-street banks push out updates every quarter just to stay alive. What was identical for a hundred years now changes every hundred days.

By the time you’ve understood the company, it’s a different company. The skill can’t be ‘learn the fixed answer,’ because there is no fixed answer. The skill has to be continuous perceptive judgment. Now that really is a skill.