Playing the “catch-up” game

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There are only two ways to catch up a “market leader”:

1. the leader makes very bad decisions that eventually comes back to haunt him and leaves him vulnerable.

or

2. you buy a startup or small company that has the innovation, but lacks the resources, giving you a better possibility of catching up.

Either is very hard, just look at Microsoft. Vista really sucked, but still they are the “market leader” operating systems. Or see at Google, they bought Android and see where they are today, still on the hunt for iPhone and trying to be the dominant mobile platform.

So, what to do? Stop playing the game of others and play your own. The catch game is like gambling in a Vegas casino, you will win enough to continue betting, but will never win against the house or break even. Do something different, which makes you the leader since you are the first to come up with it.

For example, Asus and the netbooks (eventually everybody was able to catch up). More interesting, instead of trying to play catch-up, Apple did something different, the iPad, which is a device that is between the tablet, eBook reader and netbook.

Another example is the Puma Phone, just freaking cool stuff.

At the end of the day is like convincing people to not follow the conventional patch and follow, therefore making you the leader.