It’s not copying, it’s an evolving industry standard!
Copying is natural. As a kid, we copy people around us — our parents, our siblings and our friends — and the things they do. It is not considered bad, rather it is considered cute. We love kids who copy and consistently keep learning. That is how you grow up and come of age.
As companies grow, they also copy other companies around them. However, when they do so, they get criticised for lacking originality. They are asked for an explanation for their actions. They are even accused of theft. Jony Ive, Apple’s head of design categorically mentions that Xiaomi’s Apple-like design of Mi Pad was theft. When Instagram copied Snapchat’s stories, Instagram CEO, Kevin Systrom, anticipated criticism and downplayed it by saying that their company “merely adopted similar features”.
However, copying is not new in the world of business. Let’s take a look at few examples.
Uber came up with its map-based cab booking feature. No one in the market had a similar feature (See TaxiMagic’s UI). However, other companies soon realised the value of this feature and added it to their respective products. Check out the UI of any app — Lyft, Ola or Meru cabs — and you will find that all of them use map-based cab booking. Today this is an expected way of interacting with a cab hailing app.
Similarly, Ola came up with the idea of cash payment option. Uber copied the idea for its India app because Uber realised that the Indian market was different and people preferred to pay cash. Today cash payment is an expected way of paying an Uber driver in India.
The above two examples indicate that everyone copies. In the first example, Ola copied the map-based cab booking UI from Uber. In the second example, Uber copied the cash payment option from Ola. This shows that as an industry, cab aggregators learnt better ways of doing things and imbibed them in their products.
However this mutual copying leads to products that appear quite similar, a phenomenon known as the commoditisation of a product. This is great for the consumers because their purchase decision primarily depends on the price. However this is bad for the companies because the consumers may switch simply because of the price difference and the only way to retain consumers is to reduce price and bring down the bottom line. In order to avoid this plight, companies work towards adding differentiators. For example — Ola added Ola Select, a loyalty program, offering special benefits like no peak-time pricing, and Ola Play, an entertainment platform to improve the customer’s commute experience.
Unfortunately it is not always possible to add differentiators. Recently I was talking with a Product Manager at a large software enterprise. He mentioned that his company is number 2 in the market and is always behind the market leader. In order to preserve the market share and maintain the bottom lines, his company has happily chosen to be a “fast follower” of the market leader. He admitted that his job is not as interesting as that of a PM who works for the market leading product, but it keeps the cash coming in. Paras Chopra recently wrote a brilliant piece mentioning the copying ideas is underrated. He mentions and references a Harvard interview that goes on to say that imitation is more valuable than innovation.
If copying is an industry-wide practice, why some instances of copying get criticised?
The answer lies in our connection with a brand. When you admire a brand (say Apple) you feel bad if another company affects that brand negatively.
Moreover, the media doesn’t want to educate the readers but wants to share sensational news. So they share an emotional story of Jony Ive who recollects the hard work spent on building the designs and how those designs were blatantly copied. While an Apple fan may empathise with Jony, others may just shrug and ask if Apple didn’t see it coming. Good design and features always get copied. Apple is a market leader and all market leaders attract “fast followers” and copycats. This is simply how the industry operates. The media doesn’t tell you that, because if they do so the news becomes dry and is no longer sensational.
Conclusion
There is nothing shameful in copying something better. Look at it as if you are adopting an industry standard. Adopting an established industry best practice (like Agile as a software development process) is not considered bad. Then why should you consider adopting an evolving industry standard bad? So remove all the mental roadblocks and copy. Do bear in mind that copying should be done for the right reasons and it should always improve the end-user experience.
P.S. Instagram continues to copy from Tiktok and Snapchat. YouTube copies from Twitch.
