We live in an amazing age. An era when barriers to entry and barriers to scale sometimes seem to decreasing faster than the size of semiconductors. If Moore’s law states that the number of transistors per square inch doubles approximately every two years, what would you call the similar increase in speed to scale that has emerged over the past decade?
Two weeks ago I came across a couple of videos showing not one, but two different companies who are already shipping clones of Apple’s iPhone 6, a phone that Apple hasn’t yet been able to announce and get out the door?
Do we live in an amazing era or what?
The first video is of the iPhone 6 clone called the Wico i6:
The second video is of an iPhone 6 clone called the Goophone:
Now, people are very loyal to Apple (at least outside of China) and so this is likely to impact their business very little. But would the same be true in your business?
What would the impact be to your business if a competitor launched your new flagship product before you could?
Are you creating an overall solution that is more valuable than every existing alternative and likely to be widely adopted when you launch it?
If not, shouldn’t you be?
After all if you’ve been following me for any length of time you’ll know that my definition of innovation is the following:
“Innovation transforms the useful seeds of invention into widely adopted solutions valued above every existing alternative.”
By this very definition, these clones may attempt to copy the inventions contained in the iPhone 6, but if Apple has truly packed any innovation into their forthcoming handset, it will take more than copying the look and feel of their hardware and GUI to steal any of their innovation thunder.
Innovation is of course all about value, and so any true innovation will not only excel at Value Creation, but the creators will also have put a lot of effort into Value Access AND Value Translation. Follow the link for more on my value innovation framework.
So, if you link my value innovation framework together with my definition of innovation and work to satisfy the conditions of both, you’ll see it doesn’t really matter what the competition does as long as you focus on creating value in all three areas and launching a solution truly valued above every existing alternative (including copycats, clones, or pre-emptive launches), you can still have a wildly successful launch.
So, keep innovating!
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