8 ms·

The case for copying business ideas

165 points by gx 8y ago

bitL 8y ago
This sums all that is wrong with business. A few original pioneers at the beginning and the rest are at best slightly improved copies as they require lowest energy to spend, yet boasting their awesomeness everywhere in order to sell.
- onion2k 8y ago
  Customers want iteration, evolution, and low-risk change. If every new product was a wholesale paradigm shift very few people would ever change what they spend their money on.
  - chiefalchemist 8y ago
    Nah. Customers want low friction and solutions. 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.
    - lovemenot 8y ago
      This reads like so much marketing blurb. Opinion dressed as fact. 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.
      - nicbou 8y ago
        This also reads like opinion dressed as fact
        pixl97 8y ago
        Would you argue that most businesses want to massively retrain their employee base every few months? My work experience tells me that companies commonly put off major updates because of retraining costs and scheduling.
        lovemenot 8y ago
        I didn't have supporting evidence for my opinion, so I explicitly did not claim it as a fact. Please point out why you felt I claimed an opinion as a fact, perhaps I could improve my communication with your help.
  - bitL 8y ago
    But that creates companies like Behringer; they are right now in the process of cloning every single famous synthesizer that has expired IP, selling it for 5-10x less than the original manufacturers. This would obviously lead to market full of cheap clones (of course welcome by customers), but the original designers would end up on the streets or are forced to change their mindsets to cloners, likely in 20 years completely destroying the market. If nobody is taking risks in bold original ideas, there is no longer any meaningful progress, rent-seeking becomes rampant (we see it with the massive push to subscriptions everywhere already) and once creative exciting industry becomes stale and unappealing.
    - ttoinou 8y ago
      If nobody is taking risks in bold original ideas, there is no longer any meaningful progress, rent-seeking becomes rampant Seems backward, it's IP protection by law that is rent-seeking
    - hau 8y ago
      Sitting on an idea indefinitely is not a good prospect either. Original developers knew that IP would expire and still produced original design. There're always risks, originality has some protection but so is availability and freedom of innovating at manufacturing, freedom to compete at costs. Original things can't be plenty if you can't base your work on something that someone made before. These synthesisers are based on complex previous developments, and those were an IP once. And surely those devs wouldn't end up on the street, that's ridiculous.
      - bitL 8y ago
        Look at what is happening with Gibson (sellers of CakeWalk, Oberheim etc.), how many bankruptcies/forced mergers happened in that space recently; now imagine getting a perfect clone maker to the mix, selling "legends" for cheap that might be good enough for 90% of users; the original idea people won't have any funding coming from their older works, some of them might risk it for some new idea that if not received well bankrupts them personally and they indeed end up on the street. It's happening all the time, we just don't like to hear about it.
- okket 8y ago
  Being a pioneer does not mean success. It is the execution that counts. The core business idea is important, but less than half of the whole picture.
- lmm 8y ago
  As a European and an android user, without the "copiers" most of those "original pioneers" would deliver no value to me, so I'm very glad the "copiers" exist. Don't want your business copied? Make it available to everyone yourself in the first place.
  - nicbou 8y ago
    What if the discovery process is risky and expensive? Protecting the idea is what pays the investors back.
    - lmm 8y ago
      I'd rather there be a few investors making products that I get to use than a lot of investors making products that I don't get to use.
    - kolpa 8y ago
      I think the idea is that if you license your work for slightly less than the cost of copying, everybody wins. But if you refuse to license, it's a net loss. This model goes far but does break down as the ratio of cost of creation to cost of duplication increases.
- throwawayqdhd 8y ago
  In India, Flipkart is often criticized for "copying" Amazon's idea (not that "sell stuff online" was revolutionary to begin with). 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.
- 32qwef 8y ago
  This sums up everything right with business. Market forces drive technology to constantly improve as new products build on the ideas of the past. - Business is not art. - Even art isn't totally original.
- gbacon 8y ago
  Pioneers get killed; settlers prosper.
  - maxk42 8y ago
    Pioneers die of dysentery.
m0skit0 8y ago
"The market only pays for what the market wants to buy." 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-demand-for-a-new-product/#1f27019d7e2d https://www.forbes.com/sites/sujanpatel/2016/10/22/create-a-...
- keketi 8y ago
  Being able to create demand and market only paying for what the market wants to buy are not mutually exclusive. One can create demand for a product through marketing and people are still buying what they want.
- ttoinou 8y ago
  This article seems to advance a lot of free market arguments (innovate, differentiate yourself, scarcity, problem solving...)
jacquesm 8y ago
The Samwer brothers have turned this into a huge business. http://www.wired.co.uk/article/inside-the-clone-factory 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-3.jpg https://nerdist.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/maxresdefault...)
- SiempreViernes 8y ago
  I think that qualifies as a homage rather than a simple "clone".
chiefalchemist 8y ago
Overrated is probably overstating it. It would be better to say: Originality Without Execution is Futile
- blackoil 8y ago
  Problem with Originality is that you have no one else's mistakes to learn from. Also the ecosystem and market around does not exist, so the execution is not only riskier but costly also.
0898 8y ago
Smart people have always stolen ideas from completely unrelated industries. 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.
- oftenwrong 8y ago
  >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. 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-stories-behind-classic-records/mc-act-like-they-dont-know 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.
- kevin_b_er 8y ago
  Until the modern era. Now those ideas are copyrighted and patented. The Wine Press Industry would've sued gutenberg and the entire book making industry for making "a device that can press plant material" if this were the modern era of Intellectual Property.
erikb 8y ago
> So why are they so vilified? 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.
- erikb 8y ago
  Jut FYI: Lot's of downvotes but not a single person until now could argue what their problem is. Are you downvoters one of the parasites? Or do you like to get exploited?
shubhamjain 8y ago
There are probably very few original ideas anyway. Google wasn't new, search engines already existed. Yahoo! wasn't new, web directories already existed. If you trace it hard enough, you could get to filling cabinets and folders. Over the years, I have realized that the idea of 'idea' is itself problematic. It implies that you can describe something very complex with a simple phrase (in hindsight, of course). What was iPhone? A smartphone done right? To get to iPhone, Apple had to solve thousands of tiny problems and it's rather simplistic to say that other companies missed the wave because of complacence. You don't decide to make a better smartphone, and declare your victory. 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.
- jacksmith21006 8y ago
  Sometimes the key is taking a new approach and that is what makes the difference. I am old and remember at the time Google was started the thinking was get them to your site and keep them on your site. It is all about engagement. Well Google did a complete 180 from the conventional thinking and instead tried to get them their answer quick and send them on their way. Or the exact opposite industry thinking. Google since has done the same with several others things in the business realm like this example but even far more in the technical realm. Where they did 180 from the conventional wisdom and their approach turned out to be the better approach. I have often thought why Google is able to do this while most companies struggle with unique thinking or coming up with new solution? I can only explain it is because of culture and there must be someway they can tell in the interview process. But be curious on why others think Google is able to do this in a consistent manner? What is the ingredient that makes it possible? Or is because there is no penalty for trying and failing at Google so they get the attempts? A perfect example as I type this is Fuchsia and in particular the Zircon kernel.
timavr 8y ago
Reading this article, the bar for something to be truly innovative is super high. 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.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
Hasknewbie 8y ago
It should be noted that the concept of originality and its associated "mighty pioneer Vs lowly copiers" mindset is mainly a Western cultural artifact. For example in China during most of its history if you wanted to become, say, a renowned painter, you were expected to spend your formative years copying the masters, because in that culture mastering your craft is (much) more important than being original. 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. [1] https://www.everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/ https://www.everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- corporateslaver 8y ago
  How many ground breaking innovations has China had? How many has the west had? Case in point, copying is not productive in the long run.
  - sho 8y ago
    People said that about Japan 40 years, they said that about Korea 20 years ago, and it's already becoming irrelevant about China today. Yes, they caught up by copying, like everyone else did (including the USA). 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.
    - dredmorbius 8y ago
AndrewKemendo 8y ago
2. It's likely not up to you anyway 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.
dredmorbius 8y ago
Originality is largely a concept born after 1750. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%28an+original+idea+*+100%29%2Coriginality&year_start=1700&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2C%28an%20original%20idea%20%2A%20100%29%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Coriginality%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%28an+original... An 1850 discussion: https://archive.org/stream/mechanicsmagazi48unkngoog#page/n265/mode/1up https://archive.org/stream/mechanicsmagazi48unkngoog#page/n2...
mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
It seems the recipe is to take a broad service, niche it down and improve specifically for that niche and you've got yourself something new but based on a previous success - taking out any guesswork whether it's going to succeed.

165 points by gx 8y ago

bitL 8y ago

This sums all that is wrong with business. A few original pioneers at the beginning and the rest are at best slightly improved copies as they require lowest energy to spend, yet boasting their awesomeness everywhere in order to sell.

onion2k 8y ago
Customers want iteration, evolution, and low-risk change. If every new product was a wholesale paradigm shift very few people would ever change what they spend their money on.
- chiefalchemist 8y ago
  Nah. Customers want low friction and solutions. 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.
  - lovemenot 8y ago
    This reads like so much marketing blurb. Opinion dressed as fact. 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.
    - nicbou 8y ago
      This also reads like opinion dressed as fact
      - pixl97 8y ago
        Would you argue that most businesses want to massively retrain their employee base every few months? My work experience tells me that companies commonly put off major updates because of retraining costs and scheduling.
      - lovemenot 8y ago
        I didn't have supporting evidence for my opinion, so I explicitly did not claim it as a fact. Please point out why you felt I claimed an opinion as a fact, perhaps I could improve my communication with your help.
- bitL 8y ago
  But that creates companies like Behringer; they are right now in the process of cloning every single famous synthesizer that has expired IP, selling it for 5-10x less than the original manufacturers. This would obviously lead to market full of cheap clones (of course welcome by customers), but the original designers would end up on the streets or are forced to change their mindsets to cloners, likely in 20 years completely destroying the market. If nobody is taking risks in bold original ideas, there is no longer any meaningful progress, rent-seeking becomes rampant (we see it with the massive push to subscriptions everywhere already) and once creative exciting industry becomes stale and unappealing.
  - ttoinou 8y ago
    If nobody is taking risks in bold original ideas, there is no longer any meaningful progress, rent-seeking becomes rampant Seems backward, it's IP protection by law that is rent-seeking
  - hau 8y ago
    Sitting on an idea indefinitely is not a good prospect either. Original developers knew that IP would expire and still produced original design. There're always risks, originality has some protection but so is availability and freedom of innovating at manufacturing, freedom to compete at costs. Original things can't be plenty if you can't base your work on something that someone made before. These synthesisers are based on complex previous developments, and those were an IP once. And surely those devs wouldn't end up on the street, that's ridiculous.
    - bitL 8y ago
      Look at what is happening with Gibson (sellers of CakeWalk, Oberheim etc.), how many bankruptcies/forced mergers happened in that space recently; now imagine getting a perfect clone maker to the mix, selling "legends" for cheap that might be good enough for 90% of users; the original idea people won't have any funding coming from their older works, some of them might risk it for some new idea that if not received well bankrupts them personally and they indeed end up on the street. It's happening all the time, we just don't like to hear about it.
okket 8y ago
Being a pioneer does not mean success. It is the execution that counts. The core business idea is important, but less than half of the whole picture.
lmm 8y ago
As a European and an android user, without the "copiers" most of those "original pioneers" would deliver no value to me, so I'm very glad the "copiers" exist. Don't want your business copied? Make it available to everyone yourself in the first place.
- nicbou 8y ago
  What if the discovery process is risky and expensive? Protecting the idea is what pays the investors back.
  - lmm 8y ago
    I'd rather there be a few investors making products that I get to use than a lot of investors making products that I don't get to use.
  - kolpa 8y ago
    I think the idea is that if you license your work for slightly less than the cost of copying, everybody wins. But if you refuse to license, it's a net loss. This model goes far but does break down as the ratio of cost of creation to cost of duplication increases.
throwawayqdhd 8y ago
In India, Flipkart is often criticized for "copying" Amazon's idea (not that "sell stuff online" was revolutionary to begin with). 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.
32qwef 8y ago
This sums up everything right with business. Market forces drive technology to constantly improve as new products build on the ideas of the past. - Business is not art. - Even art isn't totally original.
gbacon 8y ago
Pioneers get killed; settlers prosper.
- maxk42 8y ago
  Pioneers die of dysentery.

m0skit0 8y ago

"The market only pays for what the market wants to buy." 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-demand-for-a-new-product/#1f27019d7e2d https://www.forbes.com/sites/sujanpatel/2016/10/22/create-a-...

keketi 8y ago
Being able to create demand and market only paying for what the market wants to buy are not mutually exclusive. One can create demand for a product through marketing and people are still buying what they want.
ttoinou 8y ago
This article seems to advance a lot of free market arguments (innovate, differentiate yourself, scarcity, problem solving...)

jacquesm 8y ago

The Samwer brothers have turned this into a huge business. http://www.wired.co.uk/article/inside-the-clone-factory 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-3.jpg https://nerdist.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/maxresdefault...)

SiempreViernes 8y ago
I think that qualifies as a homage rather than a simple "clone".

chiefalchemist 8y ago

Overrated is probably overstating it. It would be better to say: Originality Without Execution is Futile

blackoil 8y ago
Problem with Originality is that you have no one else's mistakes to learn from. Also the ecosystem and market around does not exist, so the execution is not only riskier but costly also.

0898 8y ago

Smart people have always stolen ideas from completely unrelated industries. 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.

oftenwrong 8y ago
>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. 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-stories-behind-classic-records/mc-act-like-they-dont-know 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.
kevin_b_er 8y ago
Until the modern era. Now those ideas are copyrighted and patented. The Wine Press Industry would've sued gutenberg and the entire book making industry for making "a device that can press plant material" if this were the modern era of Intellectual Property.

erikb 8y ago

> So why are they so vilified? 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.

erikb 8y ago
Jut FYI: Lot's of downvotes but not a single person until now could argue what their problem is. Are you downvoters one of the parasites? Or do you like to get exploited?

shubhamjain 8y ago

There are probably very few original ideas anyway. Google wasn't new, search engines already existed. Yahoo! wasn't new, web directories already existed. If you trace it hard enough, you could get to filling cabinets and folders. Over the years, I have realized that the idea of 'idea' is itself problematic. It implies that you can describe something very complex with a simple phrase (in hindsight, of course). What was iPhone? A smartphone done right? To get to iPhone, Apple had to solve thousands of tiny problems and it's rather simplistic to say that other companies missed the wave because of complacence. You don't decide to make a better smartphone, and declare your victory. 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.

jacksmith21006 8y ago
Sometimes the key is taking a new approach and that is what makes the difference. I am old and remember at the time Google was started the thinking was get them to your site and keep them on your site. It is all about engagement. Well Google did a complete 180 from the conventional thinking and instead tried to get them their answer quick and send them on their way. Or the exact opposite industry thinking. Google since has done the same with several others things in the business realm like this example but even far more in the technical realm. Where they did 180 from the conventional wisdom and their approach turned out to be the better approach. I have often thought why Google is able to do this while most companies struggle with unique thinking or coming up with new solution? I can only explain it is because of culture and there must be someway they can tell in the interview process. But be curious on why others think Google is able to do this in a consistent manner? What is the ingredient that makes it possible? Or is because there is no penalty for trying and failing at Google so they get the attempts? A perfect example as I type this is Fuchsia and in particular the Zircon kernel.

timavr 8y ago

Reading this article, the bar for something to be truly innovative is super high. 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.

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Hasknewbie 8y ago

It should be noted that the concept of originality and its associated "mighty pioneer Vs lowly copiers" mindset is mainly a Western cultural artifact. For example in China during most of its history if you wanted to become, say, a renowned painter, you were expected to spend your formative years copying the masters, because in that culture mastering your craft is (much) more important than being original. 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. [1] https://www.everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/ https://www.everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/

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corporateslaver 8y ago
How many ground breaking innovations has China had? How many has the west had? Case in point, copying is not productive in the long run.
- sho 8y ago
  People said that about Japan 40 years, they said that about Korea 20 years ago, and it's already becoming irrelevant about China today. Yes, they caught up by copying, like everyone else did (including the USA). 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.
  - dredmorbius 8y ago

AndrewKemendo 8y ago

2. It's likely not up to you anyway 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.

dredmorbius 8y ago

Originality is largely a concept born after 1750. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%28an+original+idea+*+100%29%2Coriginality&year_start=1700&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2C%28an%20original%20idea%20%2A%20100%29%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Coriginality%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%28an+original... An 1850 discussion: https://archive.org/stream/mechanicsmagazi48unkngoog#page/n265/mode/1up https://archive.org/stream/mechanicsmagazi48unkngoog#page/n2...

mrhappyunhappy 8y ago

It seems the recipe is to take a broad service, niche it down and improve specifically for that niche and you've got yourself something new but based on a previous success - taking out any guesswork whether it's going to succeed.