Creative Imitation: How Copying Failures Can Make You a Fortune
We are often told that the secret to success is innovation. We are told to think outside the box, invent something entirely new, and change the world with an original idea. But what if that is actually the hardest and most expensive way to build a successful business? What if there is a genuine short-cut you can use?
The truth is, many of the world’s most successful businesses and economies did not start with a brand-new idea. Instead, they mastered the art of copying. When we talk about copying in business, we usually think about copying success. This is a strategy known as creative imitation.
Look at how Japan rebuilt itself after the devastation of the Second World War to become a global financial superpower. Look at what China is doing in the modern global market. They do not always try to reinvent the wheel. Instead, they study an existing, successful product—like an expensive smartphone—find a way to produce it using cheaper materials, streamline the manufacturing process, and mass-produce it. While the original company might target selling 100,000 units of their luxury item, the creative imitator targets selling hundreds of millions of units at a fraction of the cost. They take shortcuts, use affordable alternatives, and make a massive fortune by bringing a proven product to a much wider audience. And in most instances they end up making much more than the originator of the idea.
Everyone knows you can copy success stories. It is a time-tested way to build a business. But there is a much bigger, less traveled secret that can make you even more successful: learning how to copy and study miserable failures.
The Hidden Value of a Flop
When an entrepreneur tries something and fails, they leave behind an absolute goldmine of data. Unfortunately, most people look at a business failure and turn away. They think there is nothing to see there. But a smart entrepreneur looks at a failure and asks a very specific question: Why exactly did this fail?
Think about it logically. Is there any real need for you to start a business from scratch, make the exact same mistakes that someone else already made, and lose your own money just to discover those mistakes for yourself? Of course not. It makes far more sense to skip the mistakes of others, correct their miscalculations, and start your journey much closer to the finish line. Studying failures is the ultimate shortcut to business success.
When you study a business that went bankrupt, a product that failed to launch, or a marketing campaign that fell completely flat, you are doing market research that someone else paid for with their own time and money, blood sweat and tears. If you can pinpoint the exact moment or mechanism where their idea broke down, you can fix that specific part and build a successful business out of their ruins.
The Wright Brothers’ Secret Formula
This is not just a theoretical concept. It is the exact method used to invent modern aviation. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the world’s leading experts and most reputable newspapers openly declared that mechanized, heavier-than-air flying was completely impossible. They believed flying should be left entirely to the natural birds of the air.
Two high school dropouts who repaired bicycles for a living—Orville and Wilbur Wright—decided to prove them wrong. They did not have university degrees in engineering, but they had a brilliant strategy. They began their journey with research, and their research focused entirely on failures.
Using the slow postal mail system of their time, they wrote letters to libraries and organizations all over the world, gathering as much information as they could find on failed flying projects. They studied people who had attempted to build flying machines and failed—some of whom had even lost their lives in the process.
During this research, the Wright brothers built a wind tunnel to test how wind behaved against solid objects. Because they were carefully analyzing the data of past failures, they quickly realized something shocking: the math and calculations used by previous inventors were completely wrong.
By analyzing these miserable failures, the Wright brothers identified the exact mistakes that kept those earlier machines on the ground. They corrected the calculations, adjusted the wing area of their aircraft to over 500 square feet to get enough lift, and built their plane.
Because they had built their success directly on top of corrected failures, they didn't have to guess if their plane would fly on December 17, 1903, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. They already knew it would. Their historic flight lasted only 59 seconds and covered just 852 feet, but it changed human history forever.
How to Apply This to Your Business Today
If you want to use this secret to grow your own business, you need to change how you look at the market. Stop only looking at the top companies in your industry. Start looking at the ones that didn't make it.
First, look for near successes. These are businesses or products that had a great core idea but failed because of poor execution, bad timing, or a minor technical flaw. When you find a near success, you are landing very close to your own success. You do not have to build the whole foundation; you just have to fix the broken brick.
Second, analyze their marketing and customer acquisition. Did a competitor fail because their product was bad, or did they fail because they simply didn't know how to get customers right away? If the product was excellent but the marketing was poor, you can take that tried-and-tested idea, apply a superior marketing system, and capture the market.
You will have to make your own personal modifications and improvements to make an old idea fly for you. If an idea worked for someone selling solar panels, it might not work exactly the same way for your business selling something very different. But with the right adjustments, you can make it soar. Stop trying to invent something completely new. Go find a miserable failure, fix the math, and build your fortune.
Power to you.
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