Originality is largely a concept born after 1750.
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%28an+original...
An 1850 discussion: https://archive.org/stream/mechanicsmagazi48unkngoog#page/n2...
The case for copying business ideas
61–70 of 72 posts
Re: The case for copying business ideas
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
This whole concept of idea ownership is pretty damaging to progress - most progress in 20th century was seeing several companies compete in same space and take ideas from competitors, iterating on them and integrating them in new, improved products. Imagine if one car company could "own" the idea of blind spot monitoring. Or navigation. Or rear view camera.
On the other hand, there is little incentive to spend a billion dollars developing a one dollar product if it gets copied by everyone else. It can incentivize stagnation.
On still another hand, essentially placing a $1,000,000,000 barrier to entry on product innovation can incentivize stagnation as well.
Re: The case for copying business ideas
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
What if the discovery process is risky and expensive? Protecting the idea is what pays the investors back.
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.
Re: The case for copying business ideas
#64There 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 wa…
This whole concept of idea ownership is pretty damaging to progress - most progress in 20th century was seeing several companies compete in same space and take ideas from competitors, iterating on them and integrating them in new, improved products. Imagine if one car company could "own" the idea of blind spot monitoring. Or navigation. Or rear view camera.
I would go for much simpler things. Like a differential gear on your drive wheels. Without it, you either have a solid axle that literally drags and squeals your tires on every turn, or you only get one drive wheel so your car has a permanent biased to turn one direction and not the other. Or direct injection which would give a permanent advantage in fuel efficiency over competitors.
Re: The case for copying business ideas
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
This also reads like opinion dressed as fact
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.
Re: The case for copying business ideas
#66It 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.
Re: The case for copying business ideas
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
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" - ce…
>Heck, their entire system of government could be called "innovative" - certainly no-one else has ever tried that before. Authoritarian one-party rule with a strongman at the top is nothing new, they just have newer tools to enforce it.
Every shelf at your local store filled with imports from that one-party state is pretty new in my book. And "strongman"? What are you basing that on? Saddam Hussein was a "strongman". Xi Jinping is unusually powerful for the president of the CCP, sure, but he still needs to be re-elected in 2022.
Re: The case for copying business ideas
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
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" - ce…
Or of the United States in the early 19th century. The 1851 Crystal Palace exposition was quite a shock.
Care to expand on that? Why was the 1851 Expo a shock?
Re: The case for copying business ideas
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or of the United States in the early 19th century. The 1851 Crystal Palace exposition was quite a shock.
Care to expand on that? Why was the 1851 Expo a shock?
Because the US was considered a backwater at the time by Europe, Britain particularly.
Merrit Roe Smith, STS.050, MIT
Re: The case for copying business ideas
#70> 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?…
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?