Ignore the Competition. Really?
Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash
It’s a common refrain in product circles to ‘ignore the competition’. After all, we celebrate the team that builds the amazing new, not the fast follower or copy-cat. You can even hear the shame in the voice of anyone who sheepishly brings up the competition, hinting that our team should ‘copy’ that feature. Copy sounds like a dirty word, but the truth is the market doesn’t care about us or our fragile visionary egos.
“Delivering yesterday’s broken technology tomorrow.” — Des Traynor
What Des is saying above is that blindly copying is a bad strategy — you’re off building things that the competitor already knows doesn’t work! He’s right, you need your own point of view, but what happens when a competitor has something really good?
Recently the wonderful podcast player Overcast released a feature where you could record a clip in a podcast and share it. As an avid podcast listener, I loved it. In fact, it quickly became my favorite part of the application. This is saying a lot as Overcast already has awesome features like Smart Speed and Voice Boost to enhance the listening experience.
The developer Marco Ament is one of the true software innovators and his product shows it. The clips idea was so good, that is was quickly copied by another podcast player, Castro. The Castro team knew Marco was onto something, so they released their own clips feature, but they put their own spin on it. In truth, they created a more polished, thoughtful design. [1]
Should Castro have ignored the Overcast feature? I think they did the right thing by copying it. The idea was so powerful that it has become an expectation of the market. It’s a living example of how quickly features migrate from delighters to expectations — as predicted by the Kano Model.
“It’s also important to not get too obsessed with the competition. Overanalyze other products and you’ll start to limit the way you think. Take a look and then move on to your own vision and your own ideas.” — Jason Fried & DHH
So take a look, don’t obsess, but be careful! If a competitor gets something right, ask yourself if it’s the future. Is it the smartphone touchscreen or the TV remote control? It’s a judgment call, but if you talk to enough customers, you’ll likely make the right bet, just don’t let your ego keep you from serving your customers.
Like articles on building product? Subscribe to receive by email.
—
Footnotes:
Since the original launch, Marco has enhanced clips in Overcast and they are now every bit as awesome as the Castro version.