Imitation is the only form of innovation
The great myth of innovation is that it happens in isolation. Some seem to imagine the finest inventors of the industrial era – Thomas Edison, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs – spending their lives living in sealed rooms, dreaming up technologies that will transform the human existence.
Yet it was Jobs himself who gave the lie to the legend. “Picasso had a saying,” the Apple pioneer once said, “‘good artists copy, great artists steal,’ – and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.” Jobs’ quote spoke to a truth that some find awkward. Most innovation is iterative. Transformative ideas build on what went before.
Yet despite this reality, there persists a romanticized notion of the lone inventor – a person who shields himself from the world he seeks to change. This was drawn into sharp relief recently when I made the apparent mistake of tweeting my congratulations to Bhavish Aggarwal, the Indian entrepreneur whose ambitions rival those of Musk himself.
My missive – sent to Aggarwal upon his success in taking his company public – was met with a flood of petty complaints and mean-spirited criticism. Aggarwal was no ‘inventor,’ I was told. This so-called innovator was a garden-variety copycat, my critics informed me. His supposed invention – the ride-hailing service Ola – was mere mimicry, they cried. Uber got there years before.
Yet here’s the rub: Ola offers features and services that its forerunners failed to consider. It innovated far beyond Uber, particularly in its grasp of the world’s most populous market, India. Ola boasts remarkable advantages – such as ride scheduling in areas of weak internet signal, and the integration of autorickshaws – that Uber is itself now copying from Aggarwal’s pioneering contender.
It is ludicrous to condemn as fake any novelty that improves on its predecessors. In Aggarwal’s case, his company began with ideas already in the market. But to diminish his achievements to mere imitation is to ignore the tremendous innovation and adaptation that followed. Innovators would be fools to ignore the lessons of history.
Silicon Valley is littered with examples of great steps forward that were grounded in what came earlier. Facebook – now Meta – is a prime example. Almost every feature it has launched is a version of something else. Stories, Reels and Messenger are Meta eating someone else’s lunch.
The late, great Jobs himself shrinks under the gaze of some self-appointed purists. They allege that way back in 1979 he ‘stole’ ideas from Xerox to build the Macintosh. Since those halcyon days, everything Apple has created has been in some sense an iteration of what went before: even the seminal iPhone derived many of its features from the more advanced cellphones around at the time.
Meanwhile, back in Asia, India’s great foil, China, was criticized daily as The Great Emulator – a billion-strong nation that apparently did little but copy everyone else. Yet this great copycat became a cheetah. WeChat was inspired by its Western forerunner WhatsApp. It has long since outpaced it.
Today, WeChat is a ‘super app’ that offers integrated services, including payments and e-commerce, that its rivals are looking to replicate. In this and many more ways, The Great Emulator has learned its trade from others. China is now The Great Innovator, leading where it once followed.
Iterative development is the story of innovation. There is nothing new under the sun. As humans evolve, so do ideas. Our children improve the work of our grandparents. The attacks on Aggarwal are as preposterous as those on Jobs four decades ago. All innovators are imitators: it is how the copycats learned to purr.
Vivek Wadhwa is author of The Immigrant Exodus: Why America Is Losing the Global Race to Capture Entrepreneurial Talent