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Copy-Cats
Personally I have had a lot of benefit from using the perspectives I learnt from Porter and Pavitt’s work. The underlying assumption is that the innovator, the pioneer, will capture competitive advantages by being smarter, faster etc. Basically this is why we are interested in the ”knowledge economy”.
On the other hand, experience is a good teacher. Through my years of practice, I have come to work with cases and hear and read about other cases, which have made me doubt the blue-eyed innovation naivism of some TIM researchers. We see many cases in which the pioneer gets punished for being first.Steven Schnaars has written an extremely insightful book (”Managing Imitation Strategies”) on how ”copy-cats” win over the pioneers, in other words that plagiarism and even outright theft of ideas (not well enough protected) and inventions is more profitable than being a pioneer. Mr. Schnaar’s gives 65 good cases to prove his point. The BIC ball point pen case is a classic, see this teaching material from Tulane .
I have tried it myself both in the loser’s and the winner’s role. In the ”Where’s the Beef” method this means that it makes sense to always think of how a good opportunity may be copied, and try to think smarter of how to prevent copying or make it too unprofitable by putting obstacles on the copy-cat road. I look for substitutes for the invention: how could the same function be performed in slightly different ways or how could the same objective be reached by totally different technologies (I call these functional and substantial substitution forms).
An interesting case is my good friend Manfred R. Kuehnle, a genius, who has been granted more than 600 patents to his name. Have a look at Daimler-Benz’ patent US5817407 and you will see that the good car-maker got all they needed in terms of insights from working with Manfred to slightly improve his discovery and claim a new patent. Who has money to take Daimler to court?
Another good case is that of the world’s real cancer drug blockbuster, Taxol (I ask you to read the case story of Taxol, an extremely successful case from Prof Holton of Florida State University in the US ). Read how Bristol-Myers Squibb developed their own version of the technology they licensed from FSU.Nanotechnology, the next industrial revolution, is going to cause even more such legal wrangling, see the interesting article from Lux Research about how around 3,000 US nano-patents in 2005 show ”vulnerability” for weak IP positions, thus opening the field for copy-catting.
Frank Stephenson tells the fantastic story of how Holton invented the anti-cancer blockbuster drug at Florida State University's Tech Transfer Office site CLICK TO READ
The tortured trail of the best-selling cancer drug in history began 40 years ago this summer. A thunder-clap of uncommon science and luck, it's a grand story still in the telling. Also a story of how collaboration between industry and university may turn foul when big money enters. This is a "must read" for all tech transfer office staff.
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