You’ve heard that success duplicates success, but, this isn’t always a good business strategy. For example,  eBay is by far the very best online auction site despite the inflated fees and frequent user complaints. The fact of the matter is that eBay is highly successful in what it does and since it was launched in the late 90’s nothing has come close to topping it. Monopoly? Yes. Duplicatable? In a word, no. Take Microsoft as another example. They are highly successful in the computer software and online business collaboration industries. Monopoly? For the most part. Duplicatable? Considering that the only company in their field to come close to them ever is Google, I would say no. Sure Google has it’s own search engine Monopoly, but, Microsoft remains the undisputed leader of PC operating systems worldwide. The point I am trying to make is that in order to attempt to follow in the footsteps of such business giants, one must be prepared to deviate from the path from time to time.

You can’t just create a better operating system. You have to convince consumers to buy it. You can’t just create a better eBay or Google, you have to drive traffic to it. In the end your product or service can be twice as good as your competitors, but, if you don’t win the wallets of consumers you have gained nothing. Take Google for example. When Google launched in 1999, AOL, Yahoo, Excite, MSN, and Ask Jeeves were dominating the search engine market. Google wanted in, but, instead of trying to create a better search engine, they first created a better more convenient search experience. Instead of competing with the other big name search engines, they simply made the choice simple for consumers. Should somebody search on Yahoo or MSN? Will Jeeves really serve up what you are craving? The solution came from a third party search engine called Google by allowing web users to search ALL of the major search engines at the same time, bringing back a simple page with results from each. Google didn’t reinvent the wheel to turn business towards them. Instead they made the wheel easier to use and in turn, once heads were turned and they were in the spotlight, they went on to essentially reinvent the “search engine wheel”.

Every day new ideas are thought up. The ones that are successful are the ones that are introduced at the right time. Would MySpace have been as successful if a majority of online users were still interested in learning HTML? That’s what Geocities was for in the 90’s, and is also why Geocities and free personal websites flourished even into the early new millennium. Once people got sick of having to be a geek in order to meet people online, social networking sites like Friendster and MySpace blazed the trail for everybody to be able to connect to each other without having to become a computer nerd. YouTube came in at just the right time when people wanted to share more than simply pictures.

All of the successful companies mentioned here are examples of good ideas with good timing. None of these companies developed the original idea, but they all were able to take a piece of what was working and run with it, eventually surpassing the original creator of the idea. Microsoft beat out Apple. MySpace beat out Friendster. Google beat out every search engine out there. As for eBay, well, they removed the need for people to buy and sell items through old hard to use message boards and chat rooms. All in all, in order to be successful you need to make your own mark. Following in somebody else’s footsteps can help get you moving in the right direction, but, in order to pass your competition you will eventually have to start blazing the trail for yourself.