Comments on: Take It and Make It Your Own – How to Steal a Business Idea and Make It Flourish http://laurijutila.com/2009/01/take-it-and-make-it-your-own-how-to-steal-a-business-idea-and-make-it-flourish/ He who can handle the quickest rate of change survives Fri, 25 Dec 2009 05:25:55 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.1 hourly 1 By: Lauri Jutila http://laurijutila.com/2009/01/take-it-and-make-it-your-own-how-to-steal-a-business-idea-and-make-it-flourish/comment-page-1/#comment-16 Lauri Jutila Sun, 01 Feb 2009 12:11:44 +0000 http://laurijutila.com/?p=169#comment-16 @dalaixerces, thanks for your comments. As I'm a novice (blog) writer, my writing and editing process takes quite a bit of time - probably around an hour or so per this kind of a post. Planning and drafting happens in my head so that can take a while. :) But usually I have a topic and an outline ready before I start an entry. Regarding your last point on "stealing-copying" a business plan: If you go ahead and carbon copy a plan or a model, then you'll have to become the market leader in the category as I and Hardball authors pointed out. Otherwise there's a great chance that there will be a backlash, especially from the customer front. That's why most of the time you should do real value innovation and really make the business better than the competitor model you adapted. On a side note, as an interesting ready, check out Fast Company's <a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/node/52257/print" rel="nofollow">feature on George Stalk</a>. @dalaixerces, thanks for your comments.

As I’m a novice (blog) writer, my writing and editing process takes quite a bit of time – probably around an hour or so per this kind of a post. Planning and drafting happens in my head so that can take a while. :) But usually I have a topic and an outline ready before I start an entry.

Regarding your last point on “stealing-copying” a business plan: If you go ahead and carbon copy a plan or a model, then you’ll have to become the market leader in the category as I and Hardball authors pointed out. Otherwise there’s a great chance that there will be a backlash, especially from the customer front. That’s why most of the time you should do real value innovation and really make the business better than the competitor model you adapted.

On a side note, as an interesting ready, check out Fast Company’s feature on George Stalk.

]]> By: dalaixerces http://laurijutila.com/2009/01/take-it-and-make-it-your-own-how-to-steal-a-business-idea-and-make-it-flourish/comment-page-1/#comment-14 dalaixerces Mon, 12 Jan 2009 17:33:18 +0000 http://laurijutila.com/?p=169#comment-14 Very interesting piece of work you've put together here, Lauri! :-) Curiosity about how long it took you to plan/write/edit aside (as a once & future professional editor it's a hard habit to break!)....this is something that I think many people online are thinking about, especially these days. On an Internet that taps into the human potential of 6.5 billion people, there will always be competition and duplication within even vary narrow niches. Doing something a bit better isn't theft, though IMO things like domain squatting, name-thieving and legacy-piggybacking (for example, the site that has a name almost identical to our ground-breaking Mac OS Rumors and has made a fortune letting people think they're the same site that broke almost every major Apple story of the past 15 years when they aren't!) are utter unethical and immoral if not strictly illegal. I probably should have sued them blind ages ago, and probably still ought to; but I'm more concerned with the future and new things, not trying to recover whatever potential income (probably in the hundreds of thousands, minimum) I/we lost to this single case of such outrage.... Suffice to say, when you go into a "stealing-copying" business plan, think very carefully about how original your spin on it really is....and at the very least, be damned sure that you are only working with a similar idea, not trying to use a deceptively similar name or anything else that will leave a bad taste in the mouths of those who realize what's going on. Very interesting piece of work you’ve put together here, Lauri! :-)

Curiosity about how long it took you to plan/write/edit aside (as a once & future professional editor it’s a hard habit to break!)….this is something that I think many people online are thinking about, especially these days.

On an Internet that taps into the human potential of 6.5 billion people, there will always be competition and duplication within even vary narrow niches. Doing something a bit better isn’t theft, though IMO things like domain squatting, name-thieving and legacy-piggybacking (for example, the site that has a name almost identical to our ground-breaking Mac OS Rumors and has made a fortune letting people think they’re the same site that broke almost every major Apple story of the past 15 years when they aren’t!) are utter unethical and immoral if not strictly illegal.

I probably should have sued them blind ages ago, and probably still ought to; but I’m more concerned with the future and new things, not trying to recover whatever potential income (probably in the hundreds of thousands, minimum) I/we lost to this single case of such outrage….

Suffice to say, when you go into a “stealing-copying” business plan, think very carefully about how original your spin on it really is….and at the very least, be damned sure that you are only working with a similar idea, not trying to use a deceptively similar name or anything else that will leave a bad taste in the mouths of those who realize what’s going on.

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