Don't Imitate, Innovate

A simple phrase to encourage oneself to do more

I heard this phrase some years ago from a friend, a few hours before starting a challenge at WCG (World Cyber Games) that took place in Argentina. Despite the fact that at that moment he was just making a point (in short, “don’t think like your opponents”), it made me think for many days on the huge possibilities for improvement in other areas, if this concept was used. It had such a deep impact on me, that after so many time, as you can appreciate, I’m writing this article.

I realize that nowadays in this globalized world where we live, the idea of being pioneers in a particular field is really ridiculous, not to say crazy. Unfortunately many people had already been in this earth before us, and that’s why many people think that at the present time everything has been invented. I feel sorry for the people who think this way because it’s just not like that, in fact, every creation entails new creations to be developed! And surely these new ones had not been imagined without that initial idea. Our manner of evolution is like this, thanks to Darwin!

I’m writing this article while I watch a DVD of “Cirque du Soleil”, a company that began as a start up, was created by Guy Laliberté and Daniel Gauthier in a time in which another forms of entertainment (like TV or video games) had the biggest part of the market isolating the classic cirques (that in those moments took place in a track where a series of shows of different kinds were done, like clowns, jugglers, tigers and acrobats). Those guys saw beyond common sense, they innovated and as the results show, they made a company that nowadays earns U$S600 millions per year! Next, you can see a list of things they took into account for doing so.

Cases like “Cirque du Soleil” exist everywhere, we only need to have one thing quite clear, all these people wasn’t focused in challenging others companies imitating them, like an army of mimes reasonless. Instead of that they just took advantage of that time thinking about what they could offer that others just couldn’t. Nowadays things change very quickly without hesitations, that’s why we need to learn to adapt ourselves in the best way we can trying not to be statics, the professional world demands movement, interaction with other people and reasoning.

In conclusion, we’re in a century where competition is everywhere and it changes fast, we can’t let our time to be wasted thinking about what others did and then try to find a way to improve that idea to win just some crumb of the market. This ( it can be empirically shown following some companies history) carries an unthinkable identity lost, besides it creates a silly competition that aims to make products/services with small improvements, limiting resources (humans) for the innovation task, thereby letting an startup “hold back”. It’s time to start seeing things from a different view, and I think that all of us are responsible to make it happen.

Further information:

¨Don´t imitate innovate article¨

¨Cirque du Soleil ¿Cómo hizo para reinventar el modelo del negocio del circo? ¨