Reinventing the wheel?

Do you need to reinvent the wheel? In my opinion, yes you do. You just reinvent a better wheel. I heard from someone that, if you want to apply for a government technology grant, you must come out with a very solid proposal. Come out with something that people never did before. On top of that, the stuff you want to develop must have commercialization value. If you go through the title name that manage to get the grant, you notice it look so bombastic. What happen to them now?

Being the first doesnt mean you will be the last to stay there. If you look at history, Microsoft Windows is not the first, you propabaly heard of Apple Lisa. Why would Microsoft create the same thing that flop 10 years ago. The answer is, Microsoft learn from their mistake and improve. This means that, being the first, make u a guniea pig and guniea pig usually die at the end of the experiment. Microsoft never really the first in everthing, your probaly know Excel rather than Lotus 123, Access than dBase, Word than Wordperfect, Wordstar. If you are a programmer, I bet you know Visual Studio than Borland. They are sucessful because they make a better software and clever business strategies. They reinvent a better wheel.

Another good example is China. China now start to dominate the telecomunications industry. More and more backend server in the world start to use their brand. Name like Huawei or ZTE is no longer uncommon to telecomunications engineer. They make same equipment done before by Cisco, Alcatel, Ericsson, Nokia, etc. They came late to the market, but still manage to overtake. They are example of what Warren Buffet said "value propositon". It basically means, to win the market; 1) You make a product that price the same but have more extra features than competitor. or 2) You make product same features like the competitor but cheaper.