The Advantage to be the First
Simply, you can dictate the rules of the game. It’s a fact that is hard to do something that nobody done before, but it’s not impossible. Or to create something new from an existing idea. Just look at the iPod, the technology MP3, music, flash memory was already there.
Apple simply used these technologies and created a beautiful product, targeted for a specific consumer market.
Being the first has many advantages, as I wrote above, you get the opportunity to set the rules and if you do a good job, you will be one step ahead of your competition.
Doing something entirely new could easily drift you to unknown territory, where even the best marketer can’t be entirely sure what to do and how to handle problems. Planning ahead is a good thing, setting simple goals and philosophies about a service or product is also great. For example, Apple set that the iPod will be a quality product no matter what, the first generation iPod price was $500, which is a heavy price for an MP3 player, but even so the sales went to the roof, because the network effect kicked in around one simple rule which was quality.
Later, I was reading different news posts on iPod fakes, and how everybody wanted to copy the design of the iPod. Sure the design played an important role in the iPod sales, but it wasn’t the most important feature. Original iPod 1, fakes 0.
Another lesson we can learn from the iPod is to treat every customer as an individual and not as a group. A good example to this is the white iPod earphones.
My advice is to think 2 days on creating something original, than trying to copy a good idea in 1 day. The original idea always wins.
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