The first part of this book presented the techniques of strategic thinking in terms of the nature of problem solving, how discoveries are made and tested, how creativity can be harnessed and enhanced, and how attitude and style affect strategic problem-solving effectiveness. This provides the foundation for actual strategic problem solving in terms of the mastery of one's cognitive tools and abilities. Such an understanding is essential to success, but there is more to it than this. There are characteristics of the problems themselves that one must also get a feel for before even the best strategist can be successful. To make an analogy, it is not sufficient for the sculptor to have an aesthetic vision, to know the symbolism he or she wishes to convey, and to have harnessed mental faculties to the task; it is also essential to understand the nature of the materials – the way that different woods respond to carving and polishing, the receptivity of these woods to stain, the susceptibility of different types of stone to cracking, and so on. That is to say, one must know something per se about the subject to be tackled. This is usually considered domain-specific knowledge (of cars or of diseases, of pizza or of electronics, for example), which of course is beyond the scope of this book because there are hundreds of domains and their intersections where people are faced with problems.