Imitation is the highest form of flattery

I am always struck by the words of the late German banker Alfred Herrhausen: “Those who stop getting better, sooner or later cease to be good.” This philosophy rings true for me as an entrepreneur. That is why we place such importance on delivering real innovation and continuous technical improvements. And as time
goes by, it is always very interesting to see just how many XING ideas have since been copied by others – and especially to take note of exactly who these copycats are.

We aren’t completely alone in our market. As the market leader in Europe and South America, and the only social networking provider in the western world with a considerable number of Chinese members, and not just American ex-pats, we also have a competitor in the US. Competitor being the right term here, and not role model. A wave of copying is currently sweeping across Germany, while China is also a well-known example of this phenomenon. This trend almost certainly began with the Samwer brothers, who set up a 100% copy of eBay with Alando, only to then sell it to eBay within a matter of weeks. Now this trend seems to be taking the upper hand in this second Internet wave. Not a day goes by without someone declaring themselves an entrepreneur just because they’ve copied a good idea from the US. This isn’t real entrepreneurship in my eyes. Copying is just a euphemism for what it actually is, namely theft of intellectual property. The most extreme example of this boldness has to be the German network StudiVZ, which even stole the CSS files from Facebook, calling themselves entrepreneurs in the process.

Whilst all this is going on, there are many excellent ideas being born in Europe: Skype, Plazes, Zopa, Betfair, Fon and last but not least SAP, all of which have achieved more or less international market leadership. We can also still think back to inventions or start-ups that served as the inspiration for what are now large US corporations. “Echtzeit AG” for Google Earth, all the small coffeehouses in Italy for Starbucks, the CD
developed by Polygram, Philips and Bayer, or MP3s conceived at the “Frauenhofer Institute”. Innovation from Europe, Marketing from the US. The big question of who flew the first airplane makes this particularly clear: Popular opinion would have you believe it was the Wright Brothers. In truth however, it was actually Gustav
Weißkopf in 1901 and Karl Jatho on August 18, 1903, a whole 6 months before the Wright Brothers on December 17, 1903.

So for the record – here is the order of events as they happened. We take the imitation as a compliment.

Public profile: 2003, US competitor 2005
Photo in profile: 2003, US competitor 2007
Web links in profile: 2003, US competitor 2006
Payment model for Premium services: 2003, US competitor 2005
Display of people visiting my profile: 2003, US competitor 2007
Add new contact feature: 2003, US competitor 2007
Mobile version: 2004, US competitor ?
Powersearches: 2003, US competitor ?
Groups: 2003, US competitor ?

It remains to be seen what the future brings. One thing is clear: Generally speaking, the Americans outclass the Europeans in marketing. Hopefully that will soon change: Porsche, BMW and Mercedes being a role model.