The Power of Emulation

I have always believed innovation is not the only key to success. It is not that only high degree of break through innovation is what brings you success.

There are votaries of break through innovation, but much will also depend on how you define break through innovation. To me after the discovery of the wheel in Mesopotamia, there has really not been any innovation as big.

Even electricity comes from a turbine which is a wheel. Tell me one invention which is not about a circle or a wheel.

Some of us may know, that Pascal was not the innovator of the Pascals triangle. This was discovered by a Chinese philosopher and brought into France by the traders. And this Pascal copied, mulled over, mauled and modified it, and made it his, though at no point of time did hide or attempt to obscure its Chinese provenance. But the incremental innovation of Pascal that gave it the current cannot be undermined.

Lot of management schools teach the cases of companies which were not the most innovative, barely crossed the threshold of innovation, and made it big and better than the extremely innovative company that follower companies modeled themselves on, companies that could stake a claim to path breaking innovation. Amongst Pharma I can think of Amgen doing better than Genentech the latter being clearly more innovative. Amongst Generics, a clear stand out example will be Dr Reddys doing better in the long term than Ranbaxy, which was clearly the torch bearer of the Indian Gx market.

The South West Airline case, taught in B Schools is another sterling example of bona fide claim of borrowed innovation. It modeled itself on PSW, the latter lost sheen whereas SW continued to shine.

Have we not personally witnessed, in majority of cases, the brother academically lesser accomplished doing better materially. A sister less talented, landing up with a better husband.

Are the Chinese not better known in the world today for the Maglev, than its inventors in Germany. The Chinese are also better known for the martial arts which were invented in India.

In fact from the college that I graduated, often we observed, those who copied assignments often scored better than those who they copied from.

So what is that I am trying to argue out? How does it matter?