Many seemingly easy to clone businesses get dominated by startups. Facebook copied SnapChat, but had to buy Instagram. Why? The Innovator's Dilemma[1] explores

Many seemingly easy to clone businesses get dominated by startups. Facebook copied SnapChat, but had to buy Instagram. Why? The Innovator's Dilemma[1] explores this question in detail. The gist is that the processes at big companies are very well suited to certain kinds of innovations, while they preclude other kinds (known as "disruptive innovations"). One example (not the only one) has to do with margins. Big companies tend to assume that their cost structures are more or less fixed, and will tend to pass over products that seem to be lower margin than their current business. For example, home computers seemed to be much less profitable than mainframes, so a lot of manufacturers missed the boat on the personal computer revolution. It's worth reading the book and learning which ideas are likely to be copied by big companies, vs. which ideas big companies will fail at executing. [1]: http://www.amazon.com/The-Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-Business/dp/0062060244/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1356212705&sr=8-1&keywords=the+innovator%27s+dilemma http://www.amazon.com/The-Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-B...