Not quite. Petraeus had a lot of help in "fathering" this baby from James Mattis who was the co-author of the final draft of the counterinsurgency manual.
John Nagl not only served on the team to revise the manual and served as consultant to Petreaus, but also is/was the Rhodes Scholar of COIN and wrote the book "Eating Soup with a Knife"
Also, as pointed out at the link, Nagl became president of CNAS when Flournoy left there to become DoD undersecretary for policy under Gates. In fact, there were about 10 individuals at CNAS who took jobs in Obama's administration. Nagl does get to testify at numerous congressional committee hearings, and write articles published in major media outlets.
And it is possible that he could eventually get a job at DoD.
The only thing that Petraus has over Nagl is rank. General vs Lt. Colonel.