Innovating firms are able to internalize routines that facilitate variation (e.g., improvisation), have combinative capabilities (e.g., are capable of decomposing and recombining different types of knowledge), and can reflect, update, select, assimilate and integrate superior routines and capabilities. They develop routines for exchanging information with suppliers and for appropriating spillovers (which implies imitating activity). Good imitators possess much of the same: They are able to improvise as they go about adapting an imported element or system to their needs and requirements, they can combine different knowledge bases that reside both within and outside their boundaries, and they are capable of identifying and leveraging “spillovers.”
Effective imitators know how to “parse” and decipher complex systems, sort amongst a vast array of information and data points, and integrate bits and pieces of relevant knowledge. They can also develop the entrepreneurial qualities that, combined with the proper routines, allow them to identify imitation opportunities and rapidly assess and implement a suitable replication. Both innovators and imitators must learn to avoid deceivingly simple modeling of complex realties, figure ways to “parse” a multifaceted puzzle into recognizable parts without losing sight of their “combinatory architecture”, and pursue in-depth understanding of cause and effect within a relevant business context. Both should be able to work from multiple models, and vary, select and sort the more promising options and combinations among them, as well as improvise, as they navigate a rapidly changing environment. Both benefit from cluster agglomerations and from the existence of supportive and complementary skills and industries, though they must still find a way to differentiate from other cluster members.
That imitators cast a wider search net is a key advantage to innovators as well. The same is true for the ability of effective imitators to identify and analyze moves made by unrelated firms as well as competitors, and do so almost in real time. Because they need to monitor and assess vast amounts of information, the ability to scan, search and sort relevant data is essential to imitators, as is the ability to put things in context so as not to be duped by a deceivingly simple formula or be tempted to bring in a model “as is,” without examining whether the key requirements for its viability are present. The same challenge faces the innovators who seek to turn their inventions into business innovations. Imitating firms also necessitate superior implementation skills since they do not have the luxury of working at their own pace and must often catch up and react swiftly to new challenges and opportunities as they arise. This too is critical to innovators at a time when innovation can sprout anywhere, anytime, often trumping what they have been working on internally. Imitators also tend to be better tuned to the correspondence problem underlying the transplantation of an import in a new environment, which is also of importance to inventors and pioneers who are often so captivated by their creation that they neglect the practicalities of the initiative and the context in which it is to be planted.
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