Instances of clever use of the One Power

[HeavyHalfMoonBlade]

I cannot think of many. That was one of the nice things about last books was the cunning ways that Gateways were used to great effect. But for me it was always a little bit annoying how the One Power was nearly always used as weapon of blunt force, with pure strength being the only required skill. 

 

Especially given how important a role channeling exhaustion is given later in the books, you would think that channeling smarter, not harder would have been more valued. 

 

One thing that always stood out for me is when channelers are facing a cavalry charge, why did they not just weave air into an obstacle at about waist height and watch the horses go down hard, breaking legs, rolling over their riders. Surely that would be simpler and less straining than fireballs, lightening and explosions? I think their lessons in Defense against the Dark Arts were lacking, looks like holding onto teachers in that subject is a pretty universal thing.

 

Were any moments where you guys felt that the One Power could have been used better, or conversely where it was used cunningly and I am just being a forgetful old sod being unable to remember it?

[Elendir]

Rigid use of one power was result of dogmatism, each group of channelers sufered. Wise one kept out of battles, damane were slaves, aes sedai arrogantly refuse any changes.

 

Dragon destroyed all shackles and self induced shackles of their minds were one of strongest.

Edited September 18, 2023 by Elendir

[Scarloc99]

The main uses of the one power that survived from the breaking where by necessity aggressive forms in order to protect and defend. When humanity is struggling to survive esoteric weaves that entertain or do mundane fun things become pretty pointless to teach. In fact the 100 weaves that women have to channel to become an aes sedai may well be based on some of these more, fun, uses of the power. 

You also have to remember that many of the clever uses of the power where items that used standing waves, in the age of legends the one power was effectively a replacement for electricity, so people had mobile phones, flying cars, weather controlling satellites, toothbrushes and singing ornaments all powered by the one power. but the knowledge to operate and use many of those was long gone. 

Then you have the post breaking and even though there is some semblance of stablity the one power is still mainly a source of power to protect or conquer, the aes sedai focus on winning the last battle, so learn to be weapons, or to heal, Seanchan create living weapons. The Sea Folk however do do intresting things with the power, the control of the weather is beyond what even the foresaken could do at the height of their power. 

With the ending of the last battle and the foundation of the academy's and universities humanity now has the chance to explore and develop new technologies including new ways of using the one power, until eventually technology overtakes the one power and it becomes forgotten about. 

[TravellingIsAGatewayDrug]

When a pair of the rebel sisters were killed by a forsaken, I believe they mentioned that it appeared that the forsaken just wove a bubble around their heads and allowed them to suffocate.

 

It irked me that something so simple was identified as being used, so they were clearly aware of it, but then in the ensuing battle with the Seanchan they don't use the same trick. I mean, bubbling a Raken or To'Raken's head seems a more efficient use than spraying gouts of flame all over the place.

 

Rand had booby-trapped the ways in Shayol Ghul fairly cleverly, allowing trollocs to pass through and then later perish.

 

When Rand was defending the manor (I think it was a manor, fighting alongside Logain) and utilized gateways as a weapon against the trollocs, it was clever in a fashion. On the other hand gateways opening and closing like slicing jaws of doom seemes wasted. Yes, they will slice through anything, but with the fact that shadowspawn simply die when passing through a gate it seemed it would be easiers to just weave a standing/stable gateway and sweep it through swathes of shadowspawn like a shop-vac of justice.

 

Also, I haven't quite finished the books yet, but I'm kind of surprised that with Ashaman and Sisters bonding eachother, nobody has mentioned trying a dual bond yet. In example, an Ashaman could bond a sister as a warder, and then that sister could bond him as a warder in turn. We don't see any real detriment to bonding warders, it doesn't seem to tax the Aes Sedai in any way, and it seems to boost the warder's physical abilities. I imagine that dual-bonding between opposite sexed OP users would be a net positive and closest you could get to a unification of the halves of the OP. I'm sure it would be weird mentally with bonds and all, but it may have been a fun concept.

 

Maybe it is still coming though...

[HeavyHalfMoonBlade]

Dual-bonding, I could not possibly comment. Momentary amnesia, though that said, I have not read the final books very often. So it is a bit hazy.

 

Some good examples. Very well put. About the bubble on a raken's head, I think that has to do with that you have to catch it, if that makes sense. Like why throw fireballs, that slowly arc through the sky, rather than applying the weave directly? I think distance has a lot to do with it, the fireball you create nearby and send on its way, which I think would be less fatiguing than weaving hundreds of meters away. Also you have to direct the weaves so they touch what they want, so touching the orifices of a moving flying lizard must take some dexterity which could be again, more fatiguing, like not just weight lifting, but throwing darts with those weights hanging from your wrist.

 

I guess that gives some weight to the prevalence of lightening (where you make the conditions, and then guide it with minimal effort) and fireballs (low effort ranged attacks). But Androl was very, gah, spoilers. Meh. But still, it would have nice to see channelers out-thinking each other more often, in ways slightly more satisfying that Nynaeve hitting Moghedien in the face with the male a'dam, though to be fair, that was true to character.

 

And magic is just a bugger, it is not rational. Very difficult to make it make sense, and I think overall, WoT does a pretty good job. 

[Bugglesley]

It's repeatedly explained throughout the series that there is a pretty rational fear in channeling cultures--weaves can have unpredictable effects, doing something new can kill or (worse) still you. That calcifies, culturally, into the widespread Aes Sedai refusal to even consider trying to use the power in novel ways or ever try anything new (add to this the toxic culture of keeping tricks to yourself). There's a lot of hints that this culture was explicitly encouraged by Ishmael in his various vacations from the Bore. Meanwhile, the other channeling cultures are similarly rationally fearful experimentation, with the added fear of discovery by the Aes Sedai themselves. It's not until the Dragon breaks all bonds and we see the superheroes the Pattern spits out to be Rand's friends even doing new things. So the lack of creativity is built into the setting to some extent.

 

On the flipside the Asha'man are discovering things like crazy through the power of nihilism, we never really know how many men die or are severed at the Black Tower figuring things out or being pushed but it's intimated it's not a small number.

 

What I do think is a little lacking is that it's more "Nyneave got so offended that someone thought they would be permitted to die in her presence that she instinctively realized a new way to DO something" or "Whaat how could Flinn do such a thing" rather than "someone clever realized that this weave used for x could do y in a different context." This thread already has nearly all the examples I can think of, between the air bubbles or the gateway slicers (and even then, it's cool but kind of dumb? It's repeatedly pointed out that gateways rely on "heavy" use of the Power, it's gotta be more than just making a knife out of Air? (or that cool red spiderweb thing that Sammael uses on Rand)). The only other one I can think of is Asha'man just making people explode from the inside rather than wasting energy shooting a lightning bolt or what have you.

Out of universe, though, I do like that the Power exists as a soft fantasy 'plot magic' that can sort of do whatever it wants when it needs to to create a satisfying story. By being so mystical/ancient/dangerous/unclear and by insisting that even the characters who claim to be experts are still limited, confused, and flawed it lets RJ use it in all kinds of interesting and dramatic ways. By giving you hints of what it might do but never really being totally clear about what it can (and what it cannot!) it avoids feeling cheap or unearned (on which I understand that some disagree) while still giving him ton of leeway to create setups and payoffs. Opening the floodgates with too much too-clever "ah ha, rather than smashing him with a lightning bolt I will simply tweak the electricity that makes his heart beat" or whatever would 1) be way less cool than waves of Shaido bodies bursting into chunky marinara 2) encourages the kind of endless, endless and unsatisfying "why don't they just..." in the mind of the reader that we could easily get caught up in this very thread. I think he leans into "it comes down to how strong you are" because this is an epic narrative political fantasy and not a shounen battler.

 

[HeavyHalfMoonBlade]

Yes, I think RJ did very well in general with the "magic". Magic is irrational and can be a real issue in stories where it is just so arbitrary. The only thing that caught me while reading was how fashionable it was. When shielding/blocking was introduced, all the battles were about that. Then when another feature was introduced, like undoing fireballs, that was all the rage. I think the books do well, it much less intrusive than I have seen in other fantasy stories. 

 

What I did mean though was not new weaves, but clever use of simple weaves, I just felt that sometimes RJ did not want to touch channeling the way he would for example marshalling troops or swordfighting where cunning and craft were equally as important as outright strength. That may be a deliberate choice as it is easier for the reader to think about Rand being more powerful than Liandrin, unless she has some clearly defined ter'angreal for example, as it makes channeling easier to understand as a whole.

 

Because also, channeling has at its base, something of a paradox. On one hand, it is an incredibly complex literal weaving of five powers. The combination of powers, the number of different patterns of weaves, the size of the threads of the power, etc., leads to an unfathomable amount of potential different weaves. The specific skill to to weave this must be immense, like being able to weave every single tartan from memory, and then some, it speaks of massive ability in dexterity, memory and precision. On the other, the One Power is inherently intuitive. Wilders can learn to do things without any training. Rand could empower Bela, making her as strong as a horse (no, wait...) without killing her, or causing a heart attack, or any thing else. An amazingly complex technical weave, handled with amazing dexterity, but entirely by intuition. The story does not work without this aspect, but it does undermine the concept of it being such a technical, near mechanical system. But yes, magic is as magic does, because (*sob*, *sob*), it is not real.

 

Awesome reply, by the way, welcome to Dragonmount, may you always find shade and water, may peace favour your sword, and may you live long and prosper. 

 

Wait...

[Bugglesley]

I agree! That said, on reflection, I believe in a stronger version of my case in that characters do point out how even experimenting with alternate uses of simple weaves can be dangerous. I feel like RJ was applying theories about how philosophy of science works, where you can have a paradigm that is successful at describing how something works without understanding how it works. Historical examples abound in medicine, like how a lot of traditional herbal medicine leans on naturally-produced compounds that would later be isolated and put into pill form, or in astronomy where people spent centuries perfecting epicycle math to describe (and successfully predict!) the movement of the planets assuming a geocentric model before Copernicus and Kepler became standard.

 

"You know that this particular flow of Fire can heat water. What kind of madman would apply it to stone!?!?!," to use an example from I think TSR, when Rand pushes all the heat from the fires in his room into his fireplace's stones.

 

It's hammered again and again that weaving is conceived of in this way. The kind of experimentation that would push past it (why can't I put a flow of Air underneath me to fly? Why can I make a bridge from Air but not just move it around me? What rule is actually determining this?) is something that we're told is too dangerous to try (I think it's in aCoS, when Rand weaves a bridge to climb onto the Sea People's ship). And that's in a world where Yoda-style lifting rocks with small weaves of Air is seen as appropriate basic training for beginners.

 

To add to that, it's frequently implied that the difference in knowledge between the AoL and the "present" is philosophical as much as volume. In PoD, Ishy/Moridin is losing his mind that "primitives" could figure out picking apart weaves, something that they didn't in the AoL (c.f. doctors shocked that some indigenous group curing a disease with a bad prognosis in modern medicine with some herb or with a practice that the medical establishment hasn't thought to try). The flashbacks from Rhuidean and memories of the Forsaken seem to cast the Aes Sedai of that time as more scientists than wizards; when Moghedien is in her Groundhog Day bubble she mentions that such bubbles were used to do experimentation where you could poke at space and time "safely."

 

So I think the answer to "why don't they do clever reuses, even with simple weaves" is that because, if you're a wizard, you just don't do that. Not only does it not cross your mind, your eyes will widen in a pale face and you will forget your Aes Sedai cool to frantically stop anyone who tries. Your entire training reinforced the idea that you never try anything on your own, you only do what you have practiced to do, and only in the exact way you have practiced to do it. It's bone-deep social norms enforced by frequent "visits to the Mistress of Novices that leave you unable to sit comfortably for a day" and just enough Novices and Browns that broke the rules (even while they were being careful!) being stilled/exploding to prove the case.

 

The channelers in book-timeframe are all wizards. The Windfinders or Wise Ones are in different Wizarding traditions and so there are things they do that AS believe to be terrible, but they do have their own rules. Our exceptions are the Wonder Girls, who are too dumb/smart/pattern-blessed/pulled out of the Tower to hunt Black Ajah before they had the caution (literally) beaten into them, and the Asha'man who are madmen being pushed by a madman (and yeah on this reread, it feels so painfully obvious Taim is supposed to be Demandred in LoC). One of the themes that RJ definitely included on purpose is how, paradigmatically, we the readers can identify with and understand the Forsaken (and LTT, when he's lucid) more than many of the main characters. For the most part, most people educated even up to middle school in the real life present day think "like scientists," the paradigm of Western science feels as natural to us as air and it's hard to wrap our minds around people who don't follow it; but they are being rational, in their own way.

[wotfan4472]

In many ways, RJ not doing more clever uses of the one power, was because he had Star Wars doing other things on one side, and Harry Potter doing the parallels on the other.

 

What he focused on, however, was how much a channelers strength fed into the maximum range of their weaving, as much as how a really skilled channeler meant faster weaving.

 

The best examples of this, is both Graendal and Demandred at the last battle, and their fighting, particularly Graendal vs Cadsuane, Alivia, Amys, and Avendha, compared to M'Hael vs Egwene, though I loved that fight for other reasons.

 

I found Aviendha's fight more enjoyable, because it was intense and impactful, because it showed how all the channelers strengths and skills played out in that fight with female channeling, and it came down to share dumb luck Graendal lost.

 

I loved Demandred for how his vast range meant a tough battle, unless he was focused on something else, because his duels were because he was dominating that battle, and it took a duel to defeat him.

 

For me, the Logain duel with Demandred was a really great showing what I mean by both strength and skill playing out in a male channeling fight, and shows that only Rand could have beaten him.

Edited October 2, 2023 by wotfan4472

[Scarloc99]

On 9/30/2023 at 9:23 PM, HeavyHalfMoonBlade said:

Yes, I think RJ did very well in general with the "magic". Magic is irrational and can be a real issue in stories where it is just so arbitrary. The only thing that caught me while reading was how fashionable it was. When shielding/blocking was introduced, all the battles were about that. Then when another feature was introduced, like undoing fireballs, that was all the rage. I think the books do well, it much less intrusive than I have seen in other fantasy stories. 

 

What I did mean though was not new weaves, but clever use of simple weaves, I just felt that sometimes RJ did not want to touch channeling the way he would for example marshalling troops or swordfighting where cunning and craft were equally as important as outright strength. That may be a deliberate choice as it is easier for the reader to think about Rand being more powerful than Liandrin, unless she has some clearly defined ter'angreal for example, as it makes channeling easier to understand as a whole.

 

Because also, channeling has at its base, something of a paradox. On one hand, it is an incredibly complex literal weaving of five powers. The combination of powers, the number of different patterns of weaves, the size of the threads of the power, etc., leads to an unfathomable amount of potential different weaves. The specific skill to to weave this must be immense, like being able to weave every single tartan from memory, and then some, it speaks of massive ability in dexterity, memory and precision. On the other, the One Power is inherently intuitive. Wilders can learn to do things without any training. Rand could empower Bela, making her as strong as a horse (no, wait...) without killing her, or causing a heart attack, or any thing else. An amazingly complex technical weave, handled with amazing dexterity, but entirely by intuition. The story does not work without this aspect, but it does undermine the concept of it being such a technical, near mechanical system. But yes, magic is as magic does, because (*sob*, *sob*), it is not real.

 

Awesome reply, by the way, welcome to Dragonmount, may you always find shade and water, may peace favour your sword, and may you live long and prosper. 

 

Wait...

I would be really interested to know if the clever use of weaves (especially gateways) in the final 3 books came from BS's head, or where in RJ's notes as potential uses. Brandon is far used to writing about Magic in his worlds and i wonder if he couldn't help but bring his own flair to the one power. 

[Jsbrads2]

On 9/19/2023 at 1:01 PM, TravellingIsAGatewayDrug said:

When a pair of the rebel sisters were killed by a forsaken, I believe they mentioned that it appeared that the forsaken just wove a bubble around their heads and allowed them to suffocate.

 

It irked me that something so simple was identified as being used, so they were clearly aware of it, but then in the ensuing battle with the Seanchan they don't use the same trick. I mean, bubbling a Raken or To'Raken's head seems a more efficient use than spraying gouts of flame all over the place.

 

Rand had booby-trapped the ways in Shayol Ghul fairly cleverly, allowing trollocs to pass through and then later perish.

 

When Rand was defending the manor (I think it was a manor, fighting alongside Logain) and utilized gateways as a weapon against the trollocs, it was clever in a fashion. On the other hand gateways opening and closing like slicing jaws of doom seemes wasted. Yes, they will slice through anything, but with the fact that shadowspawn simply die when passing through a gate it seemed it would be easiers to just weave a standing/stable gateway and sweep it through swathes of shadowspawn like a shop-vac of justice.

 

Also, I haven't quite finished the books yet, but I'm kind of surprised that with Ashaman and Sisters bonding eachother, nobody has mentioned trying a dual bond yet. In example, an Ashaman could bond a sister as a warder, and then that sister could bond him as a warder in turn. We don't see any real detriment to bonding warders, it doesn't seem to tax the Aes Sedai in any way, and it seems to boost the warder's physical abilities. I imagine that dual-bonding between opposite sexed OP users would be a net positive and closest you could get to a unification of the halves of the OP. I'm sure it would be weird mentally with bonds and all, but it may have been a fun concept.

 

Maybe it is still coming though...

Deathgates don’t need a sweeper, they slide forward on their own. Open, slide forward, close, reopen, slide forward…

 

more generally, fairly early in the books, Rand and Avienda are facing many soldiers and two Damane, Avienda blocks the Damane, but there is no way Rand can trap so many individuals with separate weaves, and he makes one weave of air that snakes through their ranks and holds everyone. Not bad.

 

Later in the books, Nynaeve figures out how to heal madness after Rand helps her “heal” compulsion.

 

Bug, RJ early on announced that there will be no flying, even tho we know they had flying in AoL and Lenn flew too. It should be possible, the two basic methods of flying are buoyancy, like balloons, Rand had no trouble compressing the air around him when he sat at the peak of Dragonmount. The second basic method is dynamic flight, and that is very very complex, I’m an engineer and knowing how complex it really is makes it so hard to understand how we figured it out. We basically skipped lots of understanding with lots of trial and error. Wright brothers made a very good wind tunnel for testing different airfoils and they found one that worked. Others tried to test airfoils, but without the Wright’s wind tunnel, their test methods were less effective and failed.

 

 

[TravellingIsAGatewayDrug]

On 10/15/2023 at 1:19 PM, Jsbrads2 said:

Deathgates don’t need a sweeper, they slide forward on their own. Open, slide forward, close, reopen, slide forward…

 

 

Yeah, but with gateways killing shadowspawn that pass though already and the edges cutting through everything, isn't the close-reopen cycle pointless?

 

I thought of one I was sad that they didn't use as well:

Got a bunch of shadowspan coming down a canyon, open a wall to wall gateway with ingress and egress only millimeters apart. Functionally useless as a gateway and meaningless to normal folk but 100% death to shadowspan that pass through.

 

I did finally finish the series, and I wish they went a little more into the dual-bonding. When Rand and Nynaeve cleansed the taint, it was mentioned that since the two halves can never touch he essentially crafted saidar into a pipe which then could compress saidine and essentially boost the "pressure" of it.

 

Nope. None of that. You get semi-telepathy and some shared casting capability while in a circle. I mean, that is cool and all, but there was room for gestalt kind of thing with the power itself.

[Scarloc99]

8 hours ago, TravellingIsAGatewayDrug said:

Yeah, but with gateways killing shadowspawn that pass though already and the edges cutting through everything, isn't the close-reopen cycle pointless?

 

I thought of one I was sad that they didn't use as well:

Got a bunch of shadowspan coming down a canyon, open a wall to wall gateway with ingress and egress only millimeters apart. Functionally useless as a gateway and meaningless to normal folk but 100% death to shadowspan that pass through.

 

I did finally finish the series, and I wish they went a little more into the dual-bonding. When Rand and Nynaeve cleansed the taint, it was mentioned that since the two halves can never touch he essentially crafted saidar into a pipe which then could compress saidine and essentially boost the "pressure" of it.

 

Nope. None of that. You get semi-telepathy and some shared casting capability while in a circle. I mean, that is cool and all, but there was room for gestalt kind of thing with the power itself.

The whole dual bonding was a BS thing, as where all the rubbish bits about the last 3 books (so most of it). 

[Jsbrads2]

Traveling

a regular gateway isn’t as effective as a deathgate. A deathgate opens to a new location each time it opens and deposits a few body in each random location to prevent clogging up the gate. 

[Yamezt]

Someone in AoL should have worked out how to make Deathgate act more like skimming than 'random' travelling.

 

Just seems  pointless dropping off the corpses back into the world at the risk of killing or damaging property at the random re-appearance of a gateway and then stinking the whole place up with corpses.

 

If they worked out how to make it act more like skimming at least the corpses are disposed of and you can always pick a fixed location that is safe to open the other end of the gateway.

[HeavyHalfMoonBlade]

15 minutes ago, Yamezt said:

Someone in AoL should have worked out how to make Deathgate act more like skimming than 'random' travelling.

 

Just seems  pointless dropping off the corpses back into the world at the risk of killing or damaging property at the random re-appearance of a gateway and then stinking the whole place up with corpses.

 

If they worked out how to make it act more like skimming at least the corpses are disposed of and you can always pick a fixed location that is safe to open the other end of the gateway.

Congratulations, you have officially thought about this more than Team Jordan/Brandon Sanderson. As a reward you get a recommendation to go lie down in a quiet, dark place to recover.

[TravellingIsAGatewayDrug]

9 hours ago, Jsbrads2 said:

Traveling

a regular gateway isn’t as effective as a deathgate. A deathgate opens to a new location each time it opens and deposits a few body in each random location to prevent clogging up the gate. 

You almost had me until I remembered that gateways could be opened horizontally somewhere in the air, invalidating the clogging argument.

 

How much is Brandon Sanderson paying you? ;P

 

/sarcasm

[Ioulaum]

On 9/18/2023 at 12:30 PM, Elendir said:

damane were slaves

The Damane seem like the best group for iteration on effective battle tactics. Since the Suldam could see weaves and control them - and they would benefit from new techniques that brought victory in battle.

Like, even a weak female channeler may be able to use air to block your nostrils and mouth with Air, and then you're dead pretty quick. And even before they died, most people would be panicking pretty hard, so they'd be useless in a fight.

 

But... If the story became too much about the channelers, then that would complicate things. And human soldiers would quickly become meaningless in deciding the outcomes of battles.

 

Reading WoT could be annoying at times because the characters often seemed remarkably stupid. But that's part of what created the drama that made the story entertaining.

Edited October 18, 2023 by Ioulaum

[Scarloc99]

On 10/17/2023 at 10:29 PM, Yamezt said:

Someone in AoL should have worked out how to make Deathgate act more like skimming than 'random' travelling.

 

Just seems  pointless dropping off the corpses back into the world at the risk of killing or damaging property at the random re-appearance of a gateway and then stinking the whole place up with corpses.

 

If they worked out how to make it act more like skimming at least the corpses are disposed of and you can always pick a fixed location that is safe to open the other end of the gateway.

Have you never seen videos of people (usually men) firing guns up into the air in "celebration" ignoring hat gravity means, you know, someone is going to get hurt (apparently they do quite often) 

 

"Sorry mrs jones, what you have here is your typical case of Aes Sedai throwing away rubbish without paying attention to where it is gone, yes I realise there is a dead trolloc in your living room and a hole in your roof, but unfortunately if you check the terms of your insurance you will see that in the terms and conditions you are not covered for. Amongst other things

 

Balefire undoing the DIY you did in your bathroom 

Damage to people or property caused y travelling 

and 

Aes Sedai throwing trollocs around with no consideration of where they might be landing. 

[Yamezt]

4 hours ago, Scarloc99 said:

Have you never seen videos of people (usually men) firing guns up into the air in "celebration" ignoring hat gravity means, you know, someone is going to get hurt (apparently they do quite often) 

Clearly I had too much faith in my fellow humans because I  thought they were firing blanks.🤦‍♂️

[Jsbrads2]

On 10/18/2023 at 12:22 PM, Ioulaum said:

The Damane seem like the best group for iteration on effective battle tactics. Since the Suldam could see weaves and control them - and they would benefit from new techniques that brought victory in battle.

Like, even a weak female channeler may be able to use air to block your nostrils and mouth with Air, and then you're dead pretty quick. And even before they died, most people would be panicking pretty hard, so they'd be useless in a fight.

 

But... If the story became too much about the channelers, then that would complicate things. And human soldiers would quickly become meaningless in deciding the outcomes of battles.

 

Reading WoT could be annoying at times because the characters often seemed remarkably stupid. But that's part of what created the drama that made the story entertaining.

But the Damane would not really be reaarded for improving things, they would probably be punished, so they can’t innovate.

And even tho the Suldam can kind of see weaves and stuff at the end of the day, they aren’t holding the weaves, they aren’t manipulating the weaves, and so they can’t innovate as well.