Imitation Among the Species

Biologists define true (or full-fledged) imitation as mastering a novel behavior by observing someone else performing it within a means–ends structure. Biology also recognizes lesser forms of imitation, such as emulation, in which only the observable ends are pursued, and response priming, in which actions are followed but not as learned means toward fulfilling a goal. Other forms of behavior replication that fall short of true imitation are imprinting, a sort of instinctive act (as in a duckling following a moving object), and contagion, which implies engaging in species-typical behavior also called mimesis or response facilitation.

According to Britannica, mimicry is “the superficial resemblance of two or more organisms that are not closely related taxonomically, [which] confers an advantage—such as protection from predation.” Mimicry is found among a broad assortment of genus, from plants and insects to birds and animals. For example, flowers of lobelia cardinalis attract pollinators not by offering nectar but by resembling hummingbird-pollinated flowers. Insects copy the appearance of their bad-tasting brethren so as to reduce the probability of being gobbled up, and spiders adopt the color of blossoming flowers to attract their prey.¹² A marketing parallel would be consumer inferences of quality or functionality from a similarity of appearance and external features.

In animals, imitation is crucial because it guides key life-cycle decisions. For instance, in choosing mates, females tend to copy the visible preferences of others, a superior strategy given the risk involved. As choosers become better at selecting the right mate, copiers, too, become more successful because they copy the best choices made by those who experimented first or who imitated those who earlier made the better choice.

The copier’s advantage dissipates over time, however, when copiers become the bulk of the population.¹³ This phenomenon has clear parallels in economic life, where the advantages of pioneers (or innovators) and fast imitators erode and eventually disappear after most players have copied their actions. Tom Ludlam Jr., president and CEO of Prologue and a veteran of the pharmaceutical industry, observes that once six or seven entrants have joined a prescription drug market, pricing power is almost gone.¹⁴

Biologists are well aware of the benefits of imitation. For example, they explain that the ability to imitate enabled great apes to survive in a hostile environment despite their physical shortcomings and other disadvantages. With the possible exception of the great apes—as well as certain types of monkeys, dolphins, and birds (e.g., parrots)—nonhumans are capable of only simple forms of imitation such as mimicry, imprinting, and contagion. They are not capable of the advanced forms such as opaque imitation, which requires the replication of a behavior that cannot be directly observed and must be “teased” via such mechanisms as perspective taking. Although recent neuroscience research shows macaque monkeys to possess the mirror neurons that enable imitation of others in a complex, multimodal fashion, the consensus is that most animals are not capable of untangling the complex means and goals structure underlying true, or full-fledged, imitation. Indeed, many biologists believe that the ability to imitate is what separates humans from other species.¹⁵

Human newborns are so prone to imitation that scholars have labeled them “imitation machines.” Recent research has shown that rather than learning to imitate, babies learn by imitation, with trial-and-error learning beginning even before birth. Once they are born, infants imitate the facial and vocal expressions as well as the motor movements of their caregivers, and six-week-olds are already capable of deferred imitation—that is, they can repeat an activity that was performed twenty-four hours earlier. At three months, infants replace the early type of imitation with a more mature form, which includes the capacity to capture the meaning and relevance of the imitation object.

As children grow, imitation becomes more complex, and for the rest of their lives they continue to imitate, observing each other for clues about how to present themselves and how to behave in various social settings. Not surprisingly, and as economists now acknowledge, humans are especially likely to imitate those activities that appear to yield positive outcomes.¹⁶

Solving the Correspondence Problem

What gives humans the ability to decompose and reassemble complex behavior as is required in true imitation? What gives us this capability is our powerful cognitive perceptual abilities. The greater the cognitive capability, the higher the amount of imitative activity and the more accurate the imitation is likely to be.

Cognitive abilities, in turn, are vital to the tackling and resolution of the correspondence problem, which is widely perceived to be the central puzzle in imitation research. The problem—rooted in the difference in coding parameters between the visual system (observing an act) and the motor system (performing the newly acquired activity)—is defined as the challenge of converting a model into a copy that will preserve the favorable outcome observed in the original. Its solution requires a series of phases, from reception to comprehension and conversion into the recognizably similar.

To solve the correspondence problem in a real-life setting, it is not sufficient to decompose and reassemble the elements of the two systems (that of the model and that of the imitator); rather, as with all translations, it is necessary to preserve—and, if necessary, reinterpret—underlying rather than literal meanings, something that, in turn, requires solid understanding of the respective environments and mental models.¹⁷

From Instinct to Intelligent Endeavor: Imitation Redefined

Plato held it against the artist that he could match only “appearances” and thus would lead us away from the truth. Plato unfavorably compared the painter with the carpenter, because the former was twice removed from the original, and he insinuated that mimetic art was perverted, a substitute activity engaged in by those “impotent to be.” Similarly, early scholars of the art labeled imitation “mechanical and reproductive.” In time, however, they came to see it as much more than mere copying. They developed a more complex and sophisticated view of imitation, distinguishing between different forms such as likeness (exact sameness, which is virtually impossible to achieve), imitative or analogical (judged by comparison to a model), and expressive (neither identical nor comparable but serving as a “symbol and reminder of that which it represents”).¹⁸

Historians, too, started with a negative view of imitation but in time came to see it as a creative and intellectual endeavor, one that is closely linked to its supposed opposite, innovation. Because what the historian copies is “not before him,” writes Arthur Child, “in so far that he imitates, at the same time, he must, paradoxically, create.”¹⁹ Now historians view their craft as a “recitative exposition” that “sets forth the results of investigation as a course of event in imitation of its actual development,” leading to what they call “history as imitation” and underpinning major historical theories—among them, aesthetics, material culture, and technological change. These theories share a perspective that views imitation and innovation as fused rather than as separate, contrasting activities.²⁰

Biologists and cognitive scientists have traveled a similar journey. They initially derided imitation as a low-level ability, a behavior typical of the mentally weak and the childish and a process much less demanding than individual trial and error. Nineteenth-century naturalists took a similarly dim view, considering imitation to be “characteristic of women, children, savages, the mentally impaired, and animals” who had “little ability to reason for themselves.” It was not until the end of the nineteenth century that imitation was shown to be “the rarer and more cognitively demanding ability.” By 1926, Ellsworth Faris was questioning the view of imitation as “a primary instinct.” Instead of an inferior and mindless “cheap trick,” imitation eventually came to be recognized as a complex and demanding “expression of a high form of intelligence.” Now biologists agree that imitation is essential to survival, adaptation, and evolution, filling a vital niche between genetically predisposed “species typical” behavior and individual trial and error, enabling adaptation to major shifts such as climate change as well as avoidance of fatal errors resulting from self-experimentation.²¹

A similar transformation is evident in the behavioral sciences, where imitation, once defined as any “action matching in form,” has come to be seen as a learned response, an intelligent search for cause and effect, and a special faculty. This faculty is viewed as a rare capability unevenly distributed among species, subspecies, and individuals.²²

Alas, business strategy clings to the notion that only innovation is a rare ability that can serve as a basis for sustainable advantage. Imitation, it is implied, is an inferior activity whose capability is universally distributed.

Business Scholarship Falls Behind

Economic life is not fundamentally different from biological and social life. Economists acknowledge that “whenever successful enterprises are observed, the elements common to these observable successes will be associated with success and copied by others in their pursuit of profits or success.”²³ The concept of information cascade describes a situation “when it is optimal for an individual, having observed the actions of those ahead of him, to follow the behavior of the preceding individual without regard to his own information.” Similarly, rational herding describes how imitative behavior can be rational by repeating routes that have produced favorable outcomes.²⁴ Economists thus embrace, or shall we say imitate, the view that “the rule that outperforms all others is that which imitates the action of an observed individual.”²⁵

Although acknowledging that imitation could be rational, economists, and the strategy scholars who copy them, scarcely see the activity as an intelligent pursuit; rather, in sharp contrast to the consensus in the sciences, they judge it a form of “naïve learning.” They seem to have forgotten Adam Smith’s admonition that imitation involves ingenuity and deserves “the status of a creative art.”²⁶ Instead, they embrace the views of Joseph Schumpeter, who exalts the innovator in almost religious terms, stating that he is not motivated by “the fruits of success” but by “success itself.”²⁷ That is a good thing, because tangible profits often elude the innovator: as we have noted, a major study put the net present value that innovators derive from their innovations at a mere 2.2 percent, with the boost provided to performance proving to be temporary.²⁸ Most of the value seems to have gone to none other than Schumpeter’s despised “crowds”: the “me too” copycats.

So dominant is the Schumpeterian view that many observers are surprised to find that industry leaders such as Wrigley’s chewing gum and Miller Lite beer are in fact successful imitators that have pushed the now obscure innovator (in this case, Black Jack/American Chicle and Rheingold’s Gablinger’s) out of the game. Because the real innovators are no longer around, studies tend to underestimate the benefits of imitation. When pioneer losers are included—and there must be many, because at least one study shows them capturing a mere 7 percent of the market—imitators do at least as well and often much better than innovators. The same thing is true when early followers—in effect, fast imitators—are separated from the pioneers with whom they are wrongly lumped together.

Imitators also do much better when studies include the real cost of innovation, and when they use real-life settings rather than simulations that make unrealistic assumptions such as a perpetual monopoly. Even studies that find support for an innovation advantage acknowledge that “the average effect is not as dramatic as some have implied” and that “innovation today may not represent the same competitive advantage as in previous years.”²⁹ A review of the literature concluded that “although the hypothesis of a positive association between profit rates and new product introductions is widely presumed, [there is a] lack of any strong and direct empirical support in the published literature.”³⁰

Although imitation has been shown repeatedly to produce positive outcomes, it remains difficult to convince both scholarly and practitioner audiences of its value.³¹ As Mansfield wrote, “There has been a tendency . . . to assume that the innovator receives all the benefits from an innovation and that imitation can be ignored. Although we understand how convenient such assumptions may be, our results suggest how considerably they depart from reality.”³² Similarly, David Teece described firms “that labor under the mistaken illusion that developing new products that meet customer needs will ensure fabulous success,” but in reality, “a fast second or even a slow third might outperform the innovator.”³³

Managers, too, are bewildered when innovation fails to deliver. As an officer of a Japanese research institute opined after a visit to Samsung, “I wonder why, although Samsung’s overall technology level is still behind Japanese companies, how come the overall output is superior to theirs.”³⁴ “The perception is if you were really that good, you would come up with something else on your own,” says Lionel L. Nowell, former senior vice president and treasurer of PepsiCo. He adds, “Innovation is the buzz. Imitation happens.”³⁵

Imitation Reclaimed

Why is imitation underestimated? Imitation is stigmatized, among other reasons, because it is viewed as heresy to what Theodore Levitt calls “the god of innovation.”³⁶ It runs counter to our cherished ideals of free will, autonomy, and independence, and hence it threatens our sense of self and preferences for autonomy and control.³⁷

This philosophy devalues imitation, especially in the United States, with its high level of individualism and enviable innovation record. Of the ten major inventions of the twentieth century, eight—including the radio, the television set, TV broadcasting, the airplane, the mass-produced car, the wireless phone, the commercial cell phone, and the personal computer—originated in the United States.³⁸ Americans view the nation’s innovative capabilities as its key competitive advantage, and society puts innovators on a pedestal, telling children that “being number two isn’t good enough.” We are embarrassed to admit that we have followed a route paved by others, rather than, as the famous song goes, doing it “my way.”

During the heyday of Japanese competition, economists asked, “Why are Americans such poor imitators?” as opposed to the “creative imitations” displayed by the Japanese. Economists concluded that innovation-obsessed Americans invested all their energy in the research portion of R&D, whereas the Japanese focused on development, which involves small, incremental improvements, often using an imitated model as its base.³⁹ After World War II, Japanese auto firms started by knocking off U.S. automobiles, whose makers paid little attention to the then small and insignificant copycats. Those copycats went on to dominate products ranging from industrial robots to VCRs, all of which originated in the United States but were turned by the Japanese into successful new products. By 1991, Japanese firms, the imitators, obtained 44 percent of their profits from new products as compared with only 28 percent for the innovating U.S. firms.⁴⁰

Ironically, the Japanese were imitating what used to be the American way before the god of innovation had taken hold. A 1968 report found not only that the United States was responsible for 84 of the 140 most significant innovations in the post-World War II era but also that “US firms have turned into commercial successful products the results of fundamental research and inventions originating in Europe. Few cases have been found of the reverse.”⁴¹ Another study concurred that U.S. firms’ technical and commercial lead since World War II “has depended not so much on their capacity for original invention or completely new products as on their success in developing a series of greatly improved models embodying new features in design and much higher standards in performance.” ⁴² Clearly, U.S. firms continue to be foremost innovators, so one must conclude that what they have lost is the ability to imitate and, with it, the ability to imovate.