The Clone Wars

There is a big debate nowadays about companies and entrepreneurs who copy successful new businesses. Many people argue that these copies are just a sign of low creativity and lack of innovation. They criticize what those companies and entrepreneurs are doing when they clone software, ideas and business models. They see this activity at the edge of the ethical in intellectual property. They see it as a bad thing to do.

Innovation is a hard word. It implies so many different things that are hard to achieve. We use the word innovation like a commodity in our sentences, but the fact is that innovation rarely happens and is noteable in its absence. Disruption, division, break, interruption, separation, severance, splitting are needed in the innovation process, but not many people are willing to take the risk that innovation implies. Not too many people want to live their lives under the weight of innovation. They do not want to live outside established boundaries. They want to be part of something; to be disruptive, but in just the right measure. That is why the financial ecosystem creates a market to standarize innovation. Silicon Valley is the example of this financial ecosystem that protects innovation against the usual way of life.

But history demonstrates that innovation usually happens where no one expects. So if innovations fall apart because they have not happend in Silicon Valley for example, or  Silicon Valley is in crisis, how can you continue to innovate? My answer is by repetition. By boring repetition.That is, repeating is so boring that people need to move away from it, and that is where innovation can happen. That is when disruption, division, break, interruption, separation, severance, splitting are necessary to reach another reality that makes us forget our boring repetitive past.

From this point of view I see the clone wars as a perfect instrument for innovation. Companies that are successful because they have copied profitable products, services and business models, can invest their profits to move away from their boring and repetitive activities and find new ways to take risks and innovate. So from this particular point of view, the era of clones is just another sign that in the following years we will see many innovations emerge from inside of the clones. And this is a good thing!

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