Copycats: How Smart Companies Use Imitation To Gain A Strategic Edge By Oded Shenkar

Copycats: How Smart Companies Use Imitation to Gain a Strategic Edge By Oded Shenkar List Price: $29.95 Price: $19.77 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Ships from and sold by Amazon.com 54 new or used available from $11.51 Average customer review: (5 customer reviews)

Product Description

In the business world, imitation gets a bad rap. We see imitating firms as ?me too? players, forced to copy because they have nothing original to offer. We pity their fate: a life of picking up crumbs discarded by innovators striding a path paved with fame and profit.

In Copycats, Oded Shenkar challenges this viewpoint. He reveals how imitation?the exact or broad-brushed copying of an innovation?is as critical to prosperity as innovation.

Shenkar shows how savvy imitators generate huge profits. They save not only on R&D costs but also on marketing and advertising investments made by first movers. And they avoid costly errors by observing and learning from others? trials.

Copycats presents suggestions for making imitation a core element in your competitive strategy and pairing it powerfully with innovation, including:

· How to select the right model to imitate

· How to avoid oversimplification of a model

· Which imitation strategy to use

· How to prepare and execute an implementation plan

Engaging, practical, and rich in company examples, Copycats unveils how to add imitation to your competitive arsenal.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #259203 in Books
• Published on: 2010-06-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: .60" h x 6.10" w x 10.10" l, .85 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781422126738
• Condition: New
• Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback.
  Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed

Editorial Reviews

Review

"a new provocative book…" — Forbes.com

About the Author

Oded Shenkar is the Ford Motor Company Chair in Global Business Management and Professor of Management at the Fisher College of Business, The Ohio State University, where he heads the international business area. A top scholar in international strategy, he is also a prolific author, and his work has been cited in numerous publications, including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and The Economist.

Customer Reviews

Most helpful customer reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Great book
By D. Gjorgjievski
This is my first review. I felt that I needed to give my opinion on this book because it's REALLY good.

The author describes many examples of a companies that we think are innovators, when in fact they're imitators. Examples include:

- Apple
- Microsoft
- Visa
- Master
- Walmart
- McDonalds

They weren't imitating 100% but took the main concepts and improved on them. The author calls them imovators, companies that imitate + innovate.

I was frustrated with the business community overall because it focused so much on innovation and so little on imitation, when in fact, some research shows that as much as 97.8% of the value of innovation goes to imitators! (source: [...]). Ouch!

Personally, I own a very small business and been lured into thinking I need to 'innovate' and that imitation is bad. Now, when I've learned that imitation is OKAY (within legal boundaries, the author says upfront he speaks about legal, not illegal imitation) I found many profitable opportunities around me. I started to look at various trends and realize how big of a potential there is out there. This book made me see a world I never dared to see before.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Original and insightful
By Moshe Farjoun
Professor Shenkar's book is an original and insightful contribution to strategy practitioners and scholars. Well grounded in recent research in a variety of fields ranging from history to neuroscience, this book challenges conventional wisdom about innovation and imitation. Based on rich business examples the author shows the benefits of imitation and its complementarity with innovation as drivers of success. Managers will greatly benefit from Shenkar's research as it uncovers new ways of thinking about how to succeed in a global and turbulent environment and identifies the ingredients underlying effective imovators (imitator and innovator). Highly recommended.

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Insightful volume on why imitation often proves less costly and more effective than innovation
By Rolf Dobelli
Oded Shenkar, a professor who teaches global business management, offers a basic, far-reaching, somewhat surprising proposition: Imitation is faster, cheaper, easier to implement, less risky and more profitable than innovation ¬- and you can imitate legally and profitably. Still, most firms kowtow to the mythical power of innovation, striving to invent the next big thing. What if all that struggle is a waste of resources? What if it makes more sense to spend your firm's money, time and energy studying other companies' goods, services and markets, and then selecting targets to imitate? What if you can use creative copying to achieve more profit for less effort? Shenkar lays out the benefits and pitfalls of this approach with clarity and only a soupçon of academic theorizing. Unlike most business authors, he saves the best for last, and the book's final quarter offers revelatory reading and sound strategy. getAbstract recommends this book to those looking to maximize effort, insight and profit. Read this today, before some aggressive entrepreneur takes Shenkar's lessons to heart and publishes a knockoff.

http://astore.amazon.com/amazon-book-books-20/detail/1422126730