The case for copying business ideas(clearfounder.com) |
The case for copying business ideas(clearfounder.com) |
I don't hold originality in that much high regard for two reasons: first, it tends to downplay the part that's not original, and most of the time that's most of the product. Everything Is A Remix [1]. And second, I would have more respect for distinct products if they didn't result in endless copyright/patent extensions -- it becomes a bit too easy to say it was "your idea" if it applies to stuff created 60 years ago. At some point it should become part of the baseline, instead of undue revenue for rent-seekers.
This is exactly how you were supposed to become a master painter during the Renaissance in Europe as well.
There are now entire product categories which come out of China and no-where else. Drones. Camera gymbals. Personal electric scooters. Heck, their entire system of government could be called "innovative" - certainly no-one else has ever tried that before.
Give it 20 years and it'll be onto the next developing country which is copying to catch up, and China will be amongst the lead innovators - if not, as I suspect, the easy winner.
Gun powder?
Paper?
Movable type?
Clocks, compass, alcohol and on and on.
Really this is a 'What did the Romans ever do for us?' type of question.
Quite an impressive number. Enough to fill over 27 volumes in a project spanning nearly 70 years: Joseph Needham's epic Science and Civilisation in China.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_Civilisation_in_Ch...
Learn to do it right (copy), then figure out how to do it better (innovate).
I happen to think an inexpensive copy of a useful product is far better than a newly invented product that’s expensive or less useful.
Example: Cheap generic drugs vs expensive patented name brands.
But to get to the root of your argument: accepting copying as normal does not mean "no innovation", but "different innovation". Does that mean ground-breaking stuff would pop up noticeably less often? Possibly. But it's also likely that once released these products would iteratively reach a higher level of quality than what we have now (I cannot equate "learning from the masters" with the existence of Windows 8 or Gnome 3, for example). Different paths, but headed the same way.
I mean, Gutenberg invented the printing press after seeing a wine press crush grapes. Velcro was invented when some guy found burrs stuck to his trousers.
Genius isn’t conceiving some magic new technology. It's taking a mature technology and transplanting it elsewhere.
For Christmas, I bought myself a pass to Masterclass.com. They have classes by people like Malcolm Gladwell, Helen Mirren and Martin Scorsese.
I found that watching them sparks all kinds of unexpected epiphanies that you can apply to your life or your work.
For example, Deadmau5 has a folder of unfinished loops and melodies. He calls it his "Mr Potatohead" bin. He spends his time building little components – and then once in a while experiments with different ways of putting them together to make a track.
That's actually very similar to how I write.
Observing other professions is a great way to get your brain purring.
KRS-One reportedly did something similar:
> ‘Go to the car, and get me the black, blue, and green bags. And bring those here.’ They bring them in. ‘Great.’ He unzips these duffle bags full of stacks and stacks of rhyme notebooks. Rhymes he wrote in the ‘70s and ‘80s. He’ll go, ‘Umm, let’s see here, and that, and here, give me that yellow one, okay, and give me that brown one. Okay, let’s go lay the song.’ And he uses like three different rhymes, but they all sound relevant. And they sound like something he just wrote. He just skims through it, and murmurs then goes, ‘Okay, I got it.’ These are rhymes he been had, and they sound like today. That’s amazing.
from https://www.complex.com/music/2011/02/dj-premier-tells-all-s...
I'm pretty sure he was referencing this practice in 1, 2 Pass it:
>I'm the difference between indo and oregano. Imagine how fresh I am now; I made these lyrics up a year ago.
http://www.wired.co.uk/article/inside-the-clone-factory
(Fun tidbit: that photograph is also a clone, of a sleeve for a Kraftwerk record: https://nerdist.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/maxresdefault...)
The same problem is with the word 'talent.' To quote lines from one of my favorite research papers:
> What we call talent is no more than a projected reification of particular things done: hands placed correctly in the water, turns crisply executed, a head held high rather than low in the water. Through the notion of talent, we transform particular actions that a human being does into an object possessed, held in trust for the day when it will be revealed for all to see.
I think better way to think about all this is in terms of problems and their solutions. If you know a your customers face certain problem and it has already been solved, go ahead and copy it. Customers don't care where the idea came from when you do what they want/need.
This is the conclusion I'm coming to with pretty much all things that are popular. It's also why "timing" is the most important thing in determining success of - well - anything. I think the only way it really works to be successful, as in wildly successful with a paradigm shifting concept or idea, is to work with small wins on the same thing for decades and hope that the zeitgeist shifts enough to be open to adopting your vision which you can then accelerate.
One trap here though is getting cynical and jealous when a new market entrant gets all the popularity, while the long tooth person gets very little. Ted Nelson is a perfect example of this and it's a little sad to see - though I understand where it's coming from.
Originality Without Execution is Futile
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%28an+original...
An 1850 discussion: https://archive.org/stream/mechanicsmagazi48unkngoog#page/n2...
Using that logic we can argue that warp drive will be just 20% innovation because things already travelled to other planets prior, we just made it faster.
Also market is talked about as something constant, but it always changes based on zillion of events.
Some person wants to build huge ass wall. Well demand for anything to do with wall building goes up.
Recreational drugs getting legalized. Anything to do with that will go up.
It is always easy to look at something which succeeded and find reasons why. It is way harder to actually succeed irrelevant of innovation percentage.
If one succeeds it will be just enough. If one fails, it will be too little or too much.
This is a typical wrong free market argument. You can create demand, it is a known mechanism in capitalism.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/sujanpatel/2016/10/22/create-a-...
Just look at them, you can already see they live on the results that others produce. It's just about cloning other company's business idea. It's also a philosophy such kind of people apply to their whole life.
E.g. to their employees they probably set nearly unachievable goals. Then they start a vacation, while the employees are left to resolve the mess.
Customers and business partners? Often hear promises, but day by day requests for updates are responded with suggestions that leave the partners in more complicated questioning situations, maybe even stuff they should do to clear things up, so that they don't realize that again they didn't receive any results.
I don't even know much about these guys but from life experience and that photo this is my guess. Let others confirm or deny how correct it is. The article seems to confirm it. (only read after typing my guess)
> "I very rarely do interviews -- almost never,"
public, written proof of promises nobody intends to hold are annoying, right?
> Oliver takes issue with the prevailing notion that he and his brothers are driven purely by money. "If I was motivated by money alone, I would have stopped a long time ago," he insists. Rather, he suggests that what galvanises them is winning: "To prove over and over again that we're the best," he explains.
Let me put another quote against that: "It is not sufficient that I succeed – all others must fail." I strongly believe this is really their drive. They would do the same even if it would make a lot less money.
> Christian [i.e. person in very important position] was one of 50 people to drive Rocket, so losing him has no impact
As a German I have to say they are a disgrace and I'm sorry for their existence. I can tell you this: This kind of thinking is Southern German thinking, Bavarian. However neither Bavarians nor Germans really consider them Germans. Germans really are straight-forward, hard-working people, not bullshitters. Sadly since roughly 1936 Germany is lead by Bavarian/Austrian people, because they have more money and where lucky+sneaky enough to end up on the winning side with each political change.
They seem to have government support though, since Mutti Merkel really wants to turn Berlin into a Silicon Valley.
Imagine if one car company could "own" the idea of blind spot monitoring. Or navigation. Or rear view camera.
But the thing is, Flipkart entered the Indian market before Amazon.
As a consumer, I derived more value from Flipkart's "copy" that served me than from Amazon's "originality".
Same with Android. As a consumer, Android may have copied iOS, but Android's copy was far more affordable to me, and hence, I derived far more value from it than the original.
Don't want your business copied? Make it available to everyone yourself in the first place.
- Business is not art.
- Even art isn't totally original.
Fact: NO ONE wakes up and thinks "I gotta buy me some iteration today."
Iteration, evolution and low-risk change are means. They are not ends.
I would argue, but would not presume to state as fact, that the large majority of Japanese actually prefer iteration over radical innovation, almost all of the time.
Please point out why you felt I claimed an opinion as a fact, perhaps I could improve my communication with your help.
My work experience tells me that companies commonly put off major updates because of retraining costs and scheduling.
Authoritarian one-party rule with a strongman at the top is nothing new, they just have newer tools to enforce it.
Merrit Roe Smith, STS.050, MIT
>some of them might risk it for some new idea that if not received well bankrupts them personally
Owning IP exclusively forever doesn't change this at all. If IP is good then you can defend it for a some time to make profit on edge.
>It's happening all the time
Not with synthesizers/software/ee developers because of IP expiring too soon.
>now imagine getting a perfect clone maker to the mix, selling "legends" for cheap that might be good enough for 90% of users;
Imagine what all these people could do now! They could produce new innovative things.
Imagine Gibson was shit and would make shit new software that would cost as much as possible and own IP forever. That's easy to imagine because IP rights holders pushing hard for this change. That's sucks for everyone but Gibson since they get $ doing nothing. They cn also easily fire anyone involved in this innovation and prevent them from working with anything similar.
If nobody is taking risks in bold original ideas,
there is no longer any meaningful progress, rent-seeking becomes rampant
They've already made their money during the time they had the patent, so I imagine they'll not be on the streets in any literal sense. Also they have much more experience of successfully selling their product, so they could iterate to a new, better version.