Innovation is not THE key to success. The key to success is finding a market need, whether price or feature based, and filling that need. This I believe also need to be tempered with a certain degree of integrity. If you're going to undercut someone on price, at least have the forthrightness to stand on your own two feet and market your product as a distinct product, rather than attempt success purely by riding on the coat-tails of an established brand-name.
That, to me, is THE absolute lowest form of business practise imaginable. Not only is the product copied without any innovation whatsoever, but to add insult to injury, the copy attempts to derive success by selling itself as a direct copy of the original and using the original's marketing material to piggy-back itself as a valid product.
i.e. No R&D outlay. No need to establish a name-brand. No need for marketing. No need for testing. Just totally, wholly, and completely, ride the coat-tails of other's hard work.
Ethical score: 0
To answer Sin22 above, despite the very obvious similarities of various other waterblock designs to one of my earlier designs, at least those using the inherent design added something or did something different, and didn't try to use the success of one of my designs in their marketing material. I may not have liked the fact that important elements of the designs were copied, but in comparison they all stand head and shoulders over the sort of practise being defended above.
Working for a company with annual revenues in excess of $10B, I am under no illusions about what it takes to succeed in the world, but the one common theme which gets hammered into all of my companies employees can be summed up in one word "ethics". If you're financially rich but ethically poor, what are you?
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