{"id":373,"date":"2026-08-09T04:37:45","date_gmt":"2026-08-09T04:37:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/richardwinser.com\/blog\/?p=373"},"modified":"2026-08-09T04:38:45","modified_gmt":"2026-08-09T04:38:45","slug":"why-surprise-is-an-underrated-strategy-and-what-to-do-next","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/richardwinser.com\/blog\/why-surprise-is-an-underrated-strategy-and-what-to-do-next\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Surprise Is An Underrated Strategy (and what to do next)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>OpenAI is fighting several different wars simultaneously: frontier intelligence, consumer mindshare, enterprise\/developer loyalty, inference economics, ecosystem lock-in, and open-vs-closed distribution.<\/p>\n<p>Their most recent tactic: rolling out unlimited text chats for free users, globally.<\/p>\n<p>What Sun Tzu might say:<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cUse the ordinary to establish expectations; use surprise to create momentum.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Momentum comes from combining what people expect with what they do not expect; standards create credibility, while surprise changes the situation.<\/p>\n<p>ChatGPT already supplies the standard:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>familiar interface<\/li>\n<li>established brand<\/li>\n<li>established user behavior<\/li>\n<li>broad capability<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Then comes the surprise:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Remove the chat quota for free users.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Tzu translator, Gary Gagliardi, specifically says surprise becomes useful when built upon established standards, AND that it should then be converted rapidly into a real position.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s the whole point: Unlimited free usage is valuable only if OpenAI converts the resulting attention into a stronger position.<\/p>\n<p>RW<br \/>\n.<br \/>\n.<br \/>\n.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>OpenAI is fighting several different wars simultaneously: frontier intelligence, consumer mindshare, enterprise\/developer loyalty, inference economics, ecosystem lock-in, and open-vs-closed distribution. Their most recent tactic: rolling out unlimited text chats for free users, globally. What Sun Tzu might say: \u201cUse the ordinary to establish expectations; use surprise to create momentum.\u201d Momentum comes from combining what people [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,10,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ai","category-ancient-wisdom","category-strategy"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/richardwinser.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/richardwinser.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/richardwinser.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/richardwinser.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/richardwinser.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/richardwinser.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":375,"href":"https:\/\/richardwinser.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373\/revisions\/375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/richardwinser.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/richardwinser.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/richardwinser.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}