Who
Moved Apple’s Cheese? The Role Of The Knock-Off Effect In Innovation
CHRIS HAWKER
Saturday,
September 8th, 2012
Chris Hawker, the founder of Trident
Design, LLC, has over 20 years of experience developing and commercializing his
own and others’ inventions. His most famous product, the PowerSquid, was the
subject of a six-part series published in TechCrunch called the Song of the
PowerSquid.
As the president/founder
of Trident Design,
LLC, I’ve been inventing and
commercializing products for 18 years, and all the successful ones get
knocked-off.
Even the
not-so-successful ones are eventually flattered in this way. It’s pretty quick,
generally. If you’re lucky, you’ll get a couple years, but if your product is
on shelves and people are seeing it, they will be “inspired”. It’s not even
necessarily nefarious. It’s human nature. People see a possibility they didn’t
see before and it opens their mind: to something very similar to the new
innovation. They become blinded by the innovation and can’t see any other
possibilities. Sometimes it is ill-willed, however, and companies make
intentional rip-offs. Some companies actually specialize in this. The only
thing that will discourage them is the threat of patents. So the inventors’
objective is to come up with an innovation that can be reasonably protected
with a patent. If the product really takes off, you can try and hold on to your
market, at least for a time. However, a patent does not enforce itself and you
will have to be proactive to protect your territory. This can get very
expensive (over $1 million for a lawsuit), so it will typically only make
business sense for big-time products, like the iPhone....
Keep reading: http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/08/who-moved-apples-cheese-the-role-of-the-knock-off-effect-in-innovation/
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