Open Source Your Ego

Being overly competitive can considerably hurt your company and send innovation down to the abyss. Let’s examine certain psychological factors contributing to such argument. Humans are bred from infancy to adultery to be competitive creatures.  It is throughout these fragile ages that the average human develops the fundamentals that drive competitiveness. Thus, shaping their outcome on an individual bases. We certainly are constantly competing with others and even at times sub-consciously with our own selves. We compete because our neuro-circuitry is wired to do so, in many ways it drives economic prosperity and self-fulfillment, even innovation. Democratic principles further enhanced this trait, thus promoting economic revolution that has brought the world to where it is today. Let’s face it, without competition humanity will fail to advance both in greater good or evil.

Competition is a non-bias drive of both good and evil. It’s a universal driving force that affects our daily lives at the most detail level. Even as infants we compete with our peers without much conscious awareness. In an economy where innovation dictates the next best product or gadget, companies often fail to recognize the inevitable, that their product has been superseded by another. Often companies are guided by such strong competitive philosophy that such an important trait becomes impending to their vision. A quick response to an emerging rival’s product essentially distorts innovative values. Innovative companies often start with an unprecedented attitude and philosophy, often guided not by the variation of their stock price, but their internal motivation to achieve beyond what’s available. When Apple introduced its most eccentric mobile product, competitors were blown away by its simplicity and innovation, thus rushing to the drawing board in hopes of engineering as good of a competitive product, only they failed to realize that innovation isn’t a byproduct of impatient characteristics.

After the introduction of the iPhone competitors were scrambling to introduce a similar product and were busy exhausting their resources because the benchmark was re-invented. Only to realize they have been idling in their comfort zone for so long they lost sense of how innovation functions. The only available trait left was competitiveness, which in many cases backfired. Let’s take a look at RIMM for example, to compete with the iPhone, wait, they failed to consider Apple as a competitor at all. Not only they failed to calculate the implications, they further failed to identify a growth market for tablets. After the introduction of the iPad, RIMM decides to introduce their tablet with not as halve the available functional features. A quick competitive response squeezed large amount of market share from the hands of RIMM. The case was the same with other competitors, as everyone was busy trying to catch up; they often missed other growth markets. Apple not only revolutionized the world, it sent a chilling message to management of all types of firms. Yes, competition is an important and unprecedented force behind innovation, but companies should consider that a quick response is often a failed solution.

The faster management accepts the essence of reality, the quicker they can move past their egos and comfort zone to the path of innovation. Further, with a much clear vision, acknowledge that competition and innovation can’t be a function of deadlines. There is a simple universal truth to it; your product is either good or bad. Don’t exhaust your resources under some pretentious hopes. Recall that our world is not round, but rather flat. My theory that I very much would like to call grip theory dictates the following: companies are formed to capitalize on innovative products, often their neuro-circuitry is wired relative to their product base, thus gradually narrowing down their perception of true innovation and turning into a tunnel vision. Their synapses become a function of their product that essentially has limited universal potential. They grip tight and hard on what they have and fail to innovate outside of their reality. My advice is, release your mind from any controlling desires and accept the inevitable that being #1 is a temporary advantage.