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224 ENTREPRENEURIAL STRATEGIES

rather than hardware features, were the “innovations” that gave IBM the
personal computer market.
All told, creative imitation starts out with markets rather than with
products, and with customers rather than with producers. It is both
market-focused and market-driven.
These cases show what the strategy of creative imitation requires:
It requires a rapidly growing market. Creative imitators do not
succeed by taking away customers from the pioneers who have first
introduced a new product or service; they serve markets the pioneers
have created but do not adequately service. Creative imitation satis-
fies a demand that already exists rather than creating one.
The strategy has its own risks, and they are considerable. Creative imi-
tators are easily tempted to splinter their efforts in the attempt to hedge
their bets. Another danger is to misread the trend and imitate creatively
what then turns out not to be the winning development in the marketplace.
IBM, the world’s foremost creative imitator, exemplifies these
dangers. It has successfully imitated every major development in the
office-automation field. As a result, it has the leading product in every
single area. But because they originated in imitation, the products are
so diverse and so little compatible with one another that it is all but
impossible to build an integrated, automated office out of IBM build-
ing blocks. It is thus still doubtful that IBM can maintain leadership
in the automated office and provide the integrated system for it. Yet
this is where the main market of the future is going to be in all prob-
ability. And this risk, the risk of being too clever, is inherent in the
creative imitation strategy.
Creative imitation is likely to work most effectively in high-tech
areas for one simple reason: high-tech innovators are least likely to be
market-focused, and most likely to be technology- and product-
focused. They therefore tend to misunderstand their own success and
to fail to exploit and supply the demand they have created. But as
acetaminophen and the Seiko watch show, they are by no means the
only ones to do so.
Because creative imitation aims at market dominance, it is best suit-
ed to a major product, process, or service: the personal computer, the
worldwide watch market, or a market as large as that for pain relief. But
the strategy requires less of a market than being “Fustest with the
Mostest.” It carries less risk. By the time creative imitators go to work,