The really good, grand ideas tend to be copied quickly because ideas are cheap to copy but expensive to come up with. In software companies, I also think that

The really good, grand ideas tend to be copied quickly because ideas are cheap to copy but expensive to come up with. In software companies, I also think that a competitive advangage can only be hard, actual, time-consuming work. Like customer service. Or making things easy for the user by doing all the smart work yourself and not leaving all the decisions to him, thus making your software "just do the right thing". If you can afford to do such hard work then other's can't copy it except by doing the same amount of work to provide equally excellent service, and this only benefits everyone. And if they don't, it only benefits you and your customers.