Is Innovation Without Imitation A Completely Waste Of Time?

Innovation. The word absolutely reminds us as really useful and core thing for business, technology or any other sectors these days. We all have been taught or have been reading about innovation as the key to success. Books these days regularly cheer innovation. You rarely go to a conference without hearing how important it is. Copying others has a bit of a stigma. But, when I was watching the speech of Mike Rowe, host of a TV series on the Discovery Channel, Dirty Jobs, on the stage of TED, he stated that “Innovation without imitation is a complete waste of time”. Mike Rowe points out that in the United States today we often ignore the part of work – imitation – that allows genius innovation to become successful. It really made me think one more and want to explore more into it.
Thus, I tried to explore more about why innovation need part of imitation or why imitation bests innovation while others still cheer up only innovation. What’s the quickest way to succeed in business? Maybe one is to think of a great innovation. Another is to copy someone else’s great innovation. But “Is innovation without imitation a complete waste of time?”. Is innovation really cannot succeed without copying some part of other existing ideas? My conclusion is that imitation bests innovation. I am totally agreeing with it. But imitation is not mindless repetition or blind copy paste; it’s an intelligent search for cause and effect. Imitation must be creative. It must fill the existing empty spaces and can be the combination of copying the best ideas of others, adding new things to them, improving on them, learning from the mistakes of others, and continually experimenting. There’s also a long history of successful startups that are built on imitation, not innovation.

For hundreds of years, imitation has had bad rap or experiencing negative meaning such as “a low-level ability, a behavior typical of the mentally weak and the childish and a process much less demanding than individual trial and error”. Like that, still now that tends to be exist among business and strategies. For the question that what’s the quickest way to succeed in business, one may think of a great innovation while another is to copy someone else’s great innovation. But is innovation without imitation a completely waste of time?
Imitation can be more important to business growth than innovation is. Even many might be disagreeing with “Innovation Without Imitation is A Completely Waste of Time”, I will agree on it. Imitation can not only save time and money for businesses, but also, most importantly, give opportunity to learn from best practices and mistakes. But just following every part and every active of the other successful business never be succeed. It should be intelligent search for cause and effect. it’s not only important for entrepreneurs to innovate and imitate their own processes, but that it’s important to imitate, innovate slightly, and then imitate once again to find success. The imitation must be CREATIVE. Because of market differentiation, mindless repetition and “blind copy paste” never work. True innovating is really a combination of copying the best ideas of others, adding new things to them, improving on them, learning from the mistakes of others, and continually experimenting. Many successful examples including Wal Mart, Apple, Facebook, Starbucks, Mc Donald’s, Master and Visa card could tell us or approved us innovation with imitation, especially the creative imitation

According to research, too many businesses are trying to develop new ideas in ways that aren't productive, and finally became obsolete or not succeed. it can be hard to see a need and invent a way to fill that need when you've been inside one business or industry for a long time.
From my point of view, innovation is better to be defined a combination of the two, invention and imitation. The innovator does not necessarily invent something entirely new to act in an innovative manner, and it is by nature an innovation begins with the same observation of the imitator - the difference being that the innovator makes adaptations the act of imitation. That is, he understands what he is seeking to achieve, can perceive the way in which another person is trying to accomplish the goal, and recognize ways in which a specific behavior is likely to result in success of failure. And in that way, the innovator can adopt some parts of the process that seem beneficial, and substitute a more effective method for those parts of the process that seem flawed.