Page 51 - Like No Business I Know

Get in the POOL!

RALPH: Very funny! I don’t know why anyone would bet on a
robotic quadruped running against some other factory’s fake animal.
FRED: Ah, that’s because you don’t appreciate the essence of
innovation, Ralphie: it’s competition. Just like nature used to be, red
in tooth and claw. Survival of the fittest. Now the best product wins.
This is how we continue to improve our Servotechs. My employer,
Cheerful Robots Unlimited, has an entry in the Belmont Stakes next
month. If I were a betting man I’d put a few dollars on Skin Deep to
win.

RALPH: Why? Why is your so-called horse any better than, say,
Creative Tubing’s or Industroid’s or Amalgamaton’s? They’re all
designed to the same specs, all have the same power plant, the same
circuitry!
FRED (patiently): This is what I’m trying to tell you, Ralphie.
Variations in form might not be evident to the untrained eye, but our
Servotech engineers are constantly looking for new ways to improve
the breed, as it were. If our way is better, it will succeed in the
marketplace and set the standard.

RALPH: But your computerized horse-makers themselves came
from the same machine shop as your competitors’ horse-makers.
That is why their products don’t have a dime’s worth of difference!

FRED: An awful lot of people are down at the track every day who
don’t agree with you, Ralphie. Our engineers might have been wired
up in the same shop as everyone else’s, but now that they’re working
for Cheerful Robots they do things our way. Proprietary secrets,
manufacturing techniques, alloy formulas, fine-tuning algorithms—
these tiny adjustments result in a different product, just as genetic
variation led to all the species of life on this planet. Quite a few of
them are left, even now. Anyway, you won’t have to worry about
Iron Man, Amalgaton’s horse in the Stakes: we bought them out last
week and any improvements in Iron Man will be incorporated in Skin
Deep. He can’t lose!

RALPH: Doesn’t that reduce competition, the thing you value most?
FRED: Temporarily, perhaps. There’s nothing to stop a new
competitor from arising and seizing the initiative. Or our company

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