Identifying opportunities
Imitation
We all know what imitation is, but what does it mean in the context of finding opportunities for innovation?
As we’ve already discussed, innovation can be incremental. It can just be about making something slightly different or introducing something to a new context. Therefore imitating an existing business or invention can still be innovation, if there’s some sort of differentiator. However, this isn’t just about imitating. It’s only an opportunity for innovation if it’s actually going to create value. For example, the most common differentiator is the location.
Remember Rocket Internet?
Successful entrepreneurs, such as in the Rocket Internet example we mentioned in the first topic, find something innovative and then bring it to a new market in a country that it isn’t available in yet. Rocket Internet were able to successfully imitate successful businesses from America in Europe. However, this would not have been an opportunity for innovation if there wasn’t a chance to create value in Europe. For instance, they could have found that Airbnb was addressing an opportunity in America that wasn’t addressable in Europe. If they still went ahead to imitate this opportunity in Europe, it wouldn’t have been feasible or viable.
If you break down what Rocket Internet actually did to use the imitation tool to identify this opportunity for innovation, you’ll see that the imitation tool is actually the combination of the observation and research tool. To identify the opportunity they had to observe the successful business model, and then use research to see if it already existed in their context and if it would create value.
Look overseas
Do some research into a different country and try to identify a few inventions found there that are not found in Australia but could create value. For example, in China they have WeChat which brings a lot of the different phone apps into one. Try and find at least three opportunities like this. Think about why opportunities like these exist somewhere else but not in Australia. To help you do this, you can look at their distinct features and imitate them to create something different.