| Strategic relevance and surprise | Starting from a use makes the search useful, but familiar product categories can hide an alternative way to obtain that use. |
| Technical effect and public attention | Announcements, adoption and finance can change access or timing; they do not by themselves establish improved technical performance. |
| Comparable observations and changing tests | Holding conditions steady supports comparison, while a new task or measure may reveal a capability that the old comparison cannot express. |
| Component gain and whole contribution | Better local performance can be defeated by integration effort, scarce complements, changed burdens or an unchanged bottleneck elsewhere. |
| Early opportunity and warranted reliance | Waiting for mature evidence can miss a valuable inquiry; treating an early demonstration as available capability can misdirect commitment. |
| Stable history and a revisable map | The practitioner needs to recognize change over time without preserving categories that no longer explain the work. |
| Useful breadth and full search cost | Additional sources can discriminate explanations, but collection, interpretation, delay and displaced work can exceed the value of another answer. |