Danger to the left, danger to the right

My friend Brian Sommer pointed me an Inc. article about the growing threat from copycat companies.

About a  decade ago, when he and I had a startup, our instincts taught us to be wary of larger, better funded companies as threats to our IP. We were wary but of course could not match legal fees that came with deeper pockets. Nowadays, the threat is also from much smaller, nimbler companies and pirates of every type.

Which is why companies like Apple have become super-secretive and do “big-bang” global launches so copycat products don’t take advantage of a regional window of opportunity. 

Funnily, it has also affected my writing philosophy.

As a blogger, I like as much transparency as possible but as a book writer, especially when it comes to longer case studies, I often find myself being protective of the companies I am writing about. In a couple of cases I have asked them “you sure you want to share this detail?”. 

If you talk to journalists who have been “embedded” into military teams in hostile situations you realize it is a complicated balancing of exclusive front-line reporting and self-censorship. To some extent, I feel that same responsibility in this new world of IP battles.