Copying and business - does it really matter?

The new composite 787 Dreamliner airplane Photo: Boeing

 
Copying, Imitation and Business Innovation

Copying is much more common than innovation in business and it is a much surer route to growth and profits. Studies consistently show that imitators do at least as well and often far better from any new product than the original business innovators do.

 

Companies do not readily admit to being copycats. This is because it is not well accepted in general and secondly, because it can be legally risky. Apple recently won a victory in the US over Samsung for imitating the design features of its products with its Galaxy smartphones and tablets. 
 

The pace and intensity of legal imitation has quickened in recent years. In the real world, companies copy and succeed. Interestingly, the iPod was not the first digital-music player; nor was the iPhone the first smartphone or the iPad the first tablet. Apple imitated others' products but made them more appealing to consumers. 

 

The multi-billion-dollar category of supermarket own-label products is based on copying well-known brands, sometimes down to the details of the packaging. Fast-fashion firms like Zara have built empires copying innovations from the catwalk.

Copying may be safer still when the imitator is not grabbing the innovator's customers: Southwest Airlines, an American low cost airline, did not object when Ireland's Ryanair cloned its business model in Europe. 

 

Furthermore, Asian companies—such as Panasonic, whose former parent, Matsushita, was nicknamed maneshita denki, “electronics that have been copied”—have excelled at legal imitation. Therefore it would appear that copying is here to stay.

But what is the role of fakes

The role of high end luxury good fakes is an interesting social phenomenon. Some people buy luxury brands as an act of self-expression. The key to understanding fakes is that "Status" is a “positional” good. This means that to be at the top of the social heap, it is not enough to have fine things. Your things need to be finer than everyone else's. 

Others buy them as an act of social emulation, that is, they want to wear the same brands as the people they aspire to be. Studies suggest, such status-seeking consumers are more likely to buy counterfeits.

For example a Prada handbag is a mixture of two things: a well-made product and a well-marketed brand. But some consumers value prestige, but not quality. Imitations allow shoppers to “consume” the prestigious brand without buying the high-quality good.

But a luxury brand confers status only because it is exclusive. That is, it has to be widely popular, but not widely accessible. People who buy Prada are paying for exclusivity.

Copying paintings is nothing new either

A copy of the Mona Lisa was recently discovered in the Prado Museum in Madrid. This painting was created side by side with the original that now hangs in the Louvre - the version signed by Leonardo da Vinci. In the Louvre's original, which will not be cleaned in the forseeable future, Lisa's face is obscured by old, cracked varnish, making her appear almost middle-aged. In the Prado copy we can see her as she would have looked at the time - as a radiant young woman in her early 20s. Hence there now exists the rather odd spectacle that the copy of the Mona Lisa is more beautiful than the original.

Mona Lisa (Left Louvre) (Right Prado Copy)

The better preserved Madrid copy reveals much about the painting that has been lost in the original, for example,  the semi-transparent veil around her left shoulder.

Also of note, it would appear that the underdrawing of the Madrid copy was very similar to that of the original. This suggests that the original and the copy were begun at the same time and painted next to each other, as the work progressed. This is important in itself for what it tells us about Leonardo's studio practice. The production of a second painting alongside the original is indeed intriguing. The value of the original masterpiece surely is diminished given that a further copy exists, albeit produced in the same studio and preserved in a better state, even though it may not have been fully authored by the master artist. This surely blurs the relationship between copy and original that so much emphasis is put on in the art world. 

Conclusion

Whether it be copying of business models, ideas, products, artworks, copying and imitating is an essential part of most creative processes that we often choose to conveniently ignore. The Geo-Trade blog has sought to illustrate this point and to highlight that by putting limits on the freedom to copy and imitate only restricts the flow of ideas and knowledge to everyone's detriment. This is not to say that someone should not be able to benefit from the time and effort they have put into inventing something (otherwise perhaps nobody would bother to invest their time in innovating) hence to avoid their innovation being ripped off immediately, the Geo-Trade Blog endorses the need for an "exclusive right" during a relatively "short period" to enable them to reaps the full benefits of their innovation, but, with the acceptance that this is a limited right and sooner or later, their innovation will be replicated by others that may well do it better, who will in turn be copied. The cycle continues.