Have you ever sat in awe watching a local flock of birds as they make quick and abrupt changes of direction and the flock follows them? When looking at flocks of local birds, you can immediately see that they are very different from flocks of migratory birds, as migratory birds fly in a straight line. It’s hard to say why the birds fly together in formation in local flocks and seem to challenge each other as to who will lead the formation, but it seems that’s what they’re doing. With long-distance migrations, it’s obvious they do it for the aerodynamic advantage.
Now, I would like to take this analogy and propose a thought to you. I’d like you to sit down and think about it for a moment as I compare this to innovations and changes in any given industry, as industry leaders compete for position with new innovations, research and development, and other companies follow suit. Occasionally, the industry has a pretty good idea of where it’s headed in the future, but doesn’t know exactly how to get there, or the exact intended destination, just that it will eventually get there.
Let’s take a look at Apple and its latest iPod, iPhone and iPad – you’ll have to admit that this is a lot of innovation for one company in a short time. It seems that when you think there can be no new innovations, Apple comes up with something new. They are definitely innovators in the personal technology industry, personal computers and who knows what else in the future. Every time they innovate, the herd follows. Some of the other companies or birds follow them very closely and try to imitate them almost exactly.
Other companies lag behind, taking it easy without trying to fight for the top position or keep up with them. Instead of the flock making a sharp right turn, they may simply adjust their trajectory vector slightly to catch up. In essence, the following companies, the imitators and copycats of their innovations, patents and intellectual property spend much less energy, although one could loosely say that they are still part of the herd (industry).
Older or weaker birds do this more often, especially if they can’t keep up with younger, stronger birds, who may be showing off to potential mates or competing for pecking order. One might wonder which strategy is better. Flying in the wake of the leader and thus in his wake like Lance Armstrong in the Tour de France, or falling behind the “Platoon” and flying less distance each time the herd turns in a different direction, he keeps reaching indie . destiny with the rest of the birds.
If we look at Apple and its market capitalization, or a company like Google, or even Microsoft in the past, we see innovators who, if they can keep innovating, tend to win the game. In a flock of birds, the leading birds are likely to mate with the other birds of their choice and remain at the top of the pecking order. Because of all that graceful flying and hard work, they’re also probably stronger, fitter birds, and that’s a benefit too.
There will always be leaders in any industry or field, and there will always be bloodsuckers joining the ride. Some would say that the best strategy is to be the lead bird, or take advantage of as much frequency as possible using “first to market theory” and yet I would suggest in this age of rapid prototyping, cutthroat personal technology. branding and marketing deployments, that being first to market may not be prudent or even safe. Okay, but we notice that many of the pioneers of the new technology have a certain advantage, but not always.
For every Apple or Google or Microsoft, there are tens of thousands of companies, startups, innovative venture-funded firms that are no longer with us. They were also first to market, spending a lot of money on branding and marketing, setting up distribution channels, only to have the older birds copy their methods, innovations, and imitate their prototypes, thus capturing most of the market share. market in the end.
After all, they, too, landed at the destination, albeit less tired, with less money spent, and had plenty of energy to share in the profits, worms, or food available at the destination on the market.
Recently, we have been seeing a lot of lawsuits between Apple and other competing companies and imitators. Many of these companies have been abroad and have swindled proprietary information, stolen patents, or directly copied Apple products.
In China, most consumers think it’s crazy to pay full price for American products, when you can buy an exact replica or knockoff for a tenth of the price. In fact, it would be considered unwise, stupid and unwise if you decided to do the right thing and buy the original instead of the fake copy.
This means that if you are working in a company and you buy a legitimate Microsoft program or an Apple product, you would be considered stupid and maybe not a very good manager with money and therefore you would not be promoted in your company; other employees would. really laugh at you for your wrong decision to do the right thing. There is an inherent problem in the cultural differences between Americans and Chinese in that regard.
When we get into discussions of pharmaceuticals we see the same thing. In the United States it costs a lot of money to buy certain types of drugs, but in places like Africa they buy imitations from other places where they have violated patents that produce the same chemical compound and use those instead, in fact in Africa they demand the free drugs. This means that the company that invested in research and development, invested in patents, and went through the onerous FDA process, and in the meantime spent hundreds of millions of dollars in some cases, loses out.
The copy company is rewarded for cheating, stealing, and scamming intellectual property. However, if we take this back to the “flock of birds analogy”, we can see that this is very common in nature. Therefore, one could reason that imitation is perfectly natural. And even though we have patent and intellectual property laws in the United States, those companies, business owners and other cultures don’t understand what we’re talking about.
Of course, as soon as we start borrowing their technologies, it’s amazing how quickly they rediscover why patents and intellectual property rights are important. In many cases, if you can innovate and constantly stay on the cutting edge of technology and move fast, you can lead the pack and become the winning bird. Yes, it takes a lot of energy to do it, and it’s pretty much the American way of doing it, but we’ll find that eventually the rest of the herd got the rewards too, albeit only a few. most innovative and strong birds that took them there.
If we want stronger birds (Eagles) we are going to have to reward successful innovation, not to the point where they become lazy, but to the point where they can benefit from research and development, without attracting a giant flock of followers. If we don’t, we will find fewer companies innovating and we will slow down technological progression. If you’re against technology, you can be for that concept, but if you’re for advancing humanity, you can see why this is so important.
I would like to suggest that the next time you see a flock of birds flying around locally as they go round and round, you might think about the dynamics of innovation in the marketplace, all the challenges we face in our world and what we need to do. to make sure the game is fair to all concerned. We must reward the leaders of the Flock if we are to continue to race the innovation clock. Please consider all of this.
