The “Already Done” Syndrom
The technological innovation sector is quite rough. If you want to succeed there, you need to be very creative and reactive. You need to be ahead of the game while being in phase with your contemporaries and their needs. Else, you take the risk to be overtaken by the competition or to watch your precious project fall into neglect.
A rule even more important is to NEVER EVER EVER offer something that has already been done.
Wait. Really?
Actually, I don’t think so. A very common mistake in the high technology sphere is to confuse innovation for invention, and to stay paralysed by this qualitative leap. The cult of the « next big thing » can become a crooked moto. It holds back initiatives instead of motivating them, and that is definitively not the shortest way to success.
It somehow reminds me of the story of the pottery teacher. At the end of the day, it is not the one-shot perfectionist that gets the reward for the best project, but the try-harder, the one that keeps proposing things.
If you focus on delivering the perfect project, the one that will revolutionise everything and has never been seen before, you will probably fail because you won’t deliver at all. Not because you suck at creating stuff, but because you will always find some sides of your idea that have already been seen and or done. Considering that a product is already too competitive to be overtaken is leading to the same mistake than considering that you have nothing to learn anymore. Nobody is ever done with learning stuff, as well as there is no project so good that nobody will never do anything better or different.
The « already done » syndrome is you stopping at the door of a beautiful manor, not opening it because the porch looks very fancy and intimidating. But what you will never know if you don’t push the door is how much work the inside of this gorgeous mansion still needs.
The example of ARKit is very interesting. Everywhere in the media you can see expressions like “breathtaking demos” and “brand new opportunities” associated with it, while it actually relies on quite old technologies. Still, the world senses ARKit as a breakthrough.
Why? Because Apple didn’t stop at the fact that they were using « oldy but goody » technologies to claim that they were disrupting the mobile AR world. Instead, they focused on what they were bringing to the world — an easier way to make AR mainstream. Shortly after, Google offered the same. They didn’t let the Apple announcement prevent them from doing so, because they perfectly knew it is not the first one to exploit an idea who wins the game, but the one who does it better, faster, for a larger community…
Even if in appearance it is strictly the same thing, both companies are dealing with completely different outputs, from their targets to the hardware that they have to rely on. Due to that, they will get very different outcomes from their products. Regardless of who spoke first, these distinct conclusions might give different hints to them, and one of them might discover something the other won’t.
That is the game. That is how science and progress work, relying on previous iterations to go one step further.
Obviously you cannot just copy stuff and say « Hey, I am just trying to contribute to the human science journey! », but you also can’t stop your studies because somebody else did something that is similar to your project. You rather need to think carefully about your plan in order to be sure to create an added value. If you keep in mind your own vision and the will to improve the world you live in, you will probably never fall into the « copycat » trap.
Rather than « Was it already done? » the question you should ask yourself is « Am I going to bring something new? ». It looks like the same thing, but it is not. While the first question is going to make you focus on the others and limit your creativity, the other will force you to work on YOUR project, to shape it for the others to find something more than what they already have.
