I am not taking sides. Don't have all the data. I'll just say that there's a huge difference between "Research & Development" and only "Development". The first is far more time consuming, risky and expensive. The second is a clear and guided roadmap that you simply follow to completion. I used to be an idealist. I bought the whole idea of "just build a better product" without question. And so I did. Many years ago I…
Your story is interesting but your language clearly shows how it has affected your view on things - you refer to your competitors, who did nothing more than compete with you exactly as one expects in a free marketplace as "cheating", "stealing", "copying" etc. You assume that you have a natural ownership of any idea that enters your head just because you decide to expend effort into researching it. Have you thought a…
Here's a short one. Imagine this: A competitor asks you to meet, under NDA, to discuss licensing your product. "Can you build one for us with these features?" is the theme of the meeting. After lawyers do their thing, NDA's and other documents are in place, the meetings get started. These are deep technical meetings with information being shared for the purpose of developing a licensed product. Then, the talks end abruptly with no communication from the other side. Six months later they show-up at the next tradeshow with the very product you helped them understand, explore, diagram and almost get to market.
Here's another one: You hire a consultant to design a product for you. The consultant doesn't really know the field but he is capable. You, effectively, pay this person to learn on the job and design a widget for you. He does. Then, a few months later, after having learned the technical bits and also about the market opportunity, he launches a company with a competing product for less. You, effectively, paid for the "R" in "R&D". All he had to do was the "D".
These are not hypothetical situations. These actually happened.
99% copying and 1% something new?
Have you ever competed in anything? Say, swimming. Do you know how hard it is to get 1% better than world class? How about building a race car that is 1% better? C'mon, all you have to do is copy 99% of the design and then improve only 1% of it. Go do it and then come back and tell me how trivial it is to innovate just 1% of something already at the state of the art. I don't know one person who goes through such and experience that would make the kinds of comments you made.
Let's all hold hands, sing kumbaya and smoke one. Right.