Managing Imitation Strategies Review
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Managing Imitation Strategies Feature
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Reviews By Fred Kavanaugh : Date March 25, 2000
The question of why some companies innovate and prosper, becoming industry giants while others innovate and then watch the creation gobbled up to add profits to an existing larger firm has been answered in Professor Schnaars' book.
Most other books that deal with the innovation/imitation questions have a strong emotional bias toward innovation as the preferred task. It simply bothers them not to put a GeeWhiz flair to their writings. While everyone respects the inventor, it is the organization that gets the working and consistent product to the final customer that creates the value.
Unlike the GeeWhiz books, Professor Schnaars give a brief overview of the other studies of innovation and imitation strategies and then presents 28 cases of pre-empted innovators ranging from ball point pens to paperback books. In these cases, he shows the weaknesses of first movers, the range of mistakes and misfortunes that can put the innovator in a weaker position to the imitator.
Like his book Megamistakes, there is little chortling over the mistakes of the failed efforts. He does not cast them as fools who failed to keep some list, some Schnaars' Fifteen Rules of Innovators (there is some discussion at the end of the book on strategy, but no guarantees), he demonstrates that the first mover, the innovator, is in a very weak position and that it takes good fortune, good management and good market position to grab that industry leader position and hold it.
The book has been invaluable in my work in the electronics industry. I have been able to resist the siren call of promising, but weak, investments in firms that had "the" new product.
Labels: Imitation, Managing, Strategies
