- Copycats are the result of careful analysis of your product. They usually come in a better form and build on the existing business model.
- It makes you rethink your product - why are other equally that successful as you, or better/faster growing. Somewhere on the way you ignored something - be it speed to market, culture, creativity, sufficient financing. You become more open to partnerships.
- Copycats bring you out of your comfort zone, because they change the game. Now you have competition. You push yourself more, you want to persevere. And there is nothing better than that in order to improve your product and add more value to your customers. You start coming up again with ideas, look for new ways to grow.
- It changes your attitude. Many companies become arrogant and ignorant with size. Although this does not apply to all I tend to call them incumbents. And my personal believe is that incumbents should be disrupted all the time. Only this way you make them rethink their recruitment, customer support, structures.
I love the example with the hairdresser salon. If someone opens a hairdresser and few months later another guy opens a similar one few blocks away, is he a copycat? No, just another hairdresser salon. And the one offering a better service will serve customers in the long-term and the one with inferior service will either have to change or go out of business. This si the real world and there is nothing fairer than that!
Share your opinion and feel free to support or argue with me.
I disagree with (1) - copycats are copycats, there is nothing new introduced comparing to your product, and often, copycats are much worse than the original.
ReplyDeleteAdditionally - how do you know that someone is copying *your* idea? Similar ideas may come to different people at the same time (or at different times but independently), and only then, when idea is "cooked", they start to look at competition - but not always.
For instance, some of (current) Google services represent my ideas which are 20(!) years old - so, Google got into my mind and copied them? :)
Though, I agree in general - copying & improving is good for competition.
I think there is nothing better than copycats!
ReplyDeleteBelieve me there is nothing more difficult then competing with your own self and it is so easy to compete with others. :)
Aldem, the term copycats is used for companies that were created as a result of the success of a new business model. And your remark is of course right if it was about companies emerging is close succession to each other and without initial inspiration from the one or the other.
ReplyDeleteI tend to believe that besides copying the main idea, copycat companies usually follow their own way of doing things - be it technology-wise, organisational-wise and even marketing-wise in some cases.