It pains me,
still, that imitating the competition is still rampant even in innovation
efforts. Inevitably, someone says “let’s
see what other companies are doing” as a means to generate “new” ideas, generally
followed by the insistence that it’s “new to us” when someone points out the
obvious. And all too often asking if any
other company is already doing something similar is the first sign that an
innovative idea is headed for the scrap heap without any further consideration.
The same
problems arise at most firms – their attempt to distinguish themselves leads
instead to the practice of imitating one another, and doing so mindlessly. As a consequence, the common practices in
any industry are seldom based on an examination of the results they achieve,
but merely on their being done by others, on the assumption that they wouldn’t
be doing something if it weren’t getting good results.
Not only are
the common practices adopted without question, they also tend to be practiced
without question. There is no question
of their foundations, no research into their soundness, and no testing of their
performance. They are adopted without
inspection and perpetuated without validation, often in spite of evidence that they
are unproductive or even harmful. This
is not merely egregiously unwise, but reckless.
Compounding
the problem, many firms turn to agencies and design firms, who have even less
knowledge of their industry or their customer, to show them the way. There is a great deal of bluster and
precious little knowledge in these firms, yet their opinions seem to be
regarded as reliable advice from reliable professionals – until the numbers
come in sour, and then the firm hires a different agency to repeat the same
cycle. And given the recent shortening
in executive tenure, even the decision-maker who engaged the firm is long gone
by the time the damage is done.
But back on
topic, the common practices of an industry may not yield good results at all,
and even if they happen to be based on sound reasoning, it doesn’t mean they
are practicable or applicable given the unique nature of your firm, goals, and
market segment. No-one can say for
certain what will work for a given firm, and often it is not questioned whether
it had positive results elsewhere. The
result seems to be the death of innovation, while under the banner of
innovation we see a frenzy of imitating with reckless abandon.
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