As you develop a growth strategy for your business there are a few important decisions to be made. The classic choice of what type of a company you’ll be is first; product leadership, operational excellence, or customer service are the basic 3. At some level all companies choose their identity using these 3 categories. You don’t have to re-invent the wheel, but can you just blatantly copy another company? Do you have to be different to be good?

When Harvard Business School’s assistant professor in entrepreneurship, Mukti Khaire, was asked about research he’s done about startup growth, he responded that the most surprising fact he found was that, “there was a very strong positive effect that mimicking older organization had on venture growth.”

Khaire said, “while I expected this based on theoretical frameworks, we have come to associate entrepreneurship with novelty so strongly that I was nevertheless surprised to see that mimicry was beneficial even to young firms that typically do not possess historical institutional baggage.” One startup founder said to Khaire in an interview he conducted during his research, “it pays to be on the bandwagon.”

Khaire’s point about how novel we find the entrepreneurship process to be is extremely fascinating. We always think that we have to recreate the wheel in order to build and grow a successful business, or on a more micro level, to build a new business process. The fact that Khaire’s research has exposed is that we don’t, it may not pay to be “original”. We can never create an original process or business model and build a very successful business. So this begs the question, if copying a strategy is successful so often, how do I copy a business strategy?

How to copy a business strategy?

1. Identify why the strategy works.

It’s not about you. When first playing the copycat game of growth strategy it is not about you. It is about the strategy. It is about the other business that is currently employing that strategy and the biggest mistake you can make is to first ask, “how?” You’ll need to be able to ask and answer “how” eventually, but now isn’t the right time for “how”. At this stage, stage 1, you need to ask, “why?” If you ask “why” now, and thoroughly understand the answer, you’ll be much better prepared to ask “how” later. Understanding the strategy in-and-out is your first step.

2. Identify the difference between you and them.

Making a growth strategy relevant only happens by linking it, systematically, to operational practice. By using a simple situational analysis of your current operating realities you can find valuable and actionable information that is critical to your implementation.  The key to copycat-ing is to understand how your actionable information differs from the organization that you’re copying. Without understanding those differences you can send your business into a whirlwind of non-productive implementation tasks.

3. Deploy in phases.

Make the correct progression of decisions to enable strategy implementation to happen as a rapid sequence of simple steps. Attempting to take a giant leaps into a new strategy is like asking a novice skier to try a back flip. Those skill sets and comfort levels must be gradually learned and developed throughout your business before you can run full throttle. Walk before you run.

I recommend no more than 5 main phases to a strategy deployment.
Try these phases:

1. Identify why (what is your ambition for strategy deployment?).
2. Gap analysis between goal and reality (how far off are you?).
3. Align your daily operations with your strategy (plan the deployment).
4. ACTION, now you finally get to use your strategy (gut check time).
5. Measure the results and react. This is hard, but it’s critical to face the immediate reality of your decision. React and make changes as quickly as possible.

4. Never finish.

A successful growth strategy is not about feelings or culture or anything fluffy, it’s about results and measurable success (or failure). The key here is to never say, “we’re done”. You’ll always change and adjust if you want to continue to improve your strategy. The status quo is not your friend and by accepting that you are never really finished you are one step closer to survival and success. This is business and the only way to survive is to grow.

Photo from Desideria on Flickr

If for some crazy reason you didn’t love the post, here’s a sweet video of a market in Hong Kong.