Consider this:
Innovator 1: The person who conceives the idea e.g. the person who thought of and created the first internet networking website but made almost no money from it*
Innovator 2: The person who copied this idea and raked in millions through it.
We are labeling a copy-cat as innovator...Foolish - Isn’t it? But that is true, innovation has many dimensions (broadly 2 dimensions) – Innovator 1 was great on the ‘Creation’ aspect while Innovator 2 was great on the ‘Application’ aspect.
Can we say Innovator 1 > Innovator 2 or the other way round?
Well, it really depends on what objective these innovators had in mind and were they able to achieve those objectives. However, for most businesses, Innovator 2 would be better than Innovator 1 because the inherent objective of most businesses is to make money.
So, innovation (of type 2) might not actually be a big ticket item as most people think it to be.
* This is just an example and doesn’t refer to any person in the real world
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Cheating = Innovation
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1 comment:
Manu,
You are right in your absolute sense. However, you have ways to protect your innovations and thats where patents help.
Point that I was trying to drive home is that for any country to gain strength in global markets, they must sell finished products rather than raw material.
A classical example is China ... the success and recognition comes to them as they productize all their novel ideas and sell them to the world in quality customized fashion that suites the geography.
Garment industry in rural india (esp southern india) is another practical example. Due to lack of machinery and predominantly middle man market, they are forced to sell raw material and ideas that get executed in European markets. So recognition goes down in the drain ..
IT industry is no different .. our services model is unique and we get recognition for this because we have successfully 'productized' it for the global markets .. thankfully new breed entrepreneurs have realized this and are taking more focussed approach. three cheers here.
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