Copycats
Most CEOs seem to have learned competitive strategy development in Kindergarden or the first grade when and where it was simple and basic.
Somewhere along the line that strategy must have proven effective and worked, because today it has quickly become the very essence of the ways of modern business and new product development especially in these rapidly moving and all-too challenging times.
The latest example of this is mighty Microsoft moving into smartphone and tablet markets while deploying a new marketplace web store to support their new generation of Windows Mango phones and probably more.
It is not my imagination that as I looked over the latest pictures of smartphones about to be released, they all looked like Apple iPhones. Now that is Design-style “Follow the leader” taken to the extreme.
There are surely thousands of other and sometimes better examples as this technique has now become THE most effective and most used business strategy for entering new markets and/or remaining in a market and keeping up with the market leader.
Most analysis is focused on how Apple has managed to whether decades long Microsoft challenges to work design and device magic on the marketplace and move into the envied position they now hold.
I could declare that all this demonstrates a lack of creativity or style, but the “perps” would surely reply that they just don’t have the time nor money to waste on any unproven design, just ask HP how that worked out for them.