Copycat
Twitter freaks like me have recently taken some heat for slowing their blog posting pace because they were twitting. Lazy us. So I decided to occasionally post some tweets (ie very small arcticles) on this blog. Here’s one.
At school, pupils are taught not to cheat on one’s neighbour. Cheating is like stealing or killing someone: it’s a crime and it’s wrong. What matters is your performance. No matter if it’s low or high since someone will normally get you on the path to improvement.
In the real world, especially in high tech, I believe tables are turned: I think not watching over one’s neighbour’ shoulders is a crime. In the real world, schools put aside, everybody watches everybody, every copies everybody – for the sake of all, on the condition that intellectual property isn’t violated.
To those willing to delve further (a Tweet is supposed to be short), I highly recommend you to take a look at this ‘Break from the pack: how to compete in a copycat economy’ book by Oren Harari (not the one on the side picture). I read it last year and it was worth it: examples on how to differentiate were very telling (WFMI, Madonna, etc.) but still, the most thriving businesses are those who steal the best from competitors and build something special of their own genius on top of it. Apple didn’t invent user interfaces and the mouse (Xeroc PARC did) but still, it manufactured the first mouse and user interface personal computer, namely the Macintosh, because it knew, something more than its competitors about industrial design. By the same token, Microsoft didn’t invent operating systems (and even purchased for a flat fee a major part of what became IBM PC DOS from Gary Kildall’s CP/M) but managed to build a dominant position in this market by superbly implementing a very innovative OEM business model. Google eventually monetized its search engine capabilities by replicating, in a somewhat more talented way, what Yahoo! was doing with the Overture online ad platform, etc. etc.
In short, business often is about copying or dying. To win, one has to bring something hard to replicate -on top of the commodity: Apple products are well-designed and therefore sexy; Microsoft is a formidable organization when it comes to democratizing technology ie taking unknown software products to mass market; Google provides cutting-edge search results. Any more good example, anyone?
ADDENDUM 9:29pm GMT +1: reading it again, maybe the post wasn’t so short after all…Sorry about that.
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Apple, Business intelligence, Business strategy, Education, Entertainment, Entrepreneurship, Google, Internet, Microsoft, Organization, Project Management, Silicon Valley, Twitter, innovation, open-source, operations
As Picasso said: Good Designers Copy, Great Designers Steal. I think that pretty much says it all. I think that stealing / copying is a practice that very easily happens in areas where it is still hard to measure the value: Art, basic R&D (there was an article on “exploitation” in the latest HBR, a nice way of saying stealing), start-ups, and web2.0.
What can you do about it? Tie it into a value-chain pretty much. Make an idea be worth nothing with the added value of the creator or the organisation around it. Whatever you do, don’t start converting “art” into business before it is ready for it. That usually tends to ruin the artistic / creative / fun part of it.
(Good idea on the tweets, btw.)