The tripartite schema of Idea, artifact, and imitator is as much about making as it is about imitation.
If these associations stand up under scrutiny, they put the imitator at the opposite pole from a god, thus rendering the products of imitation not only lowly nothings but more malevolently profane, even blasphemous.
After JetBlue started flights last year between New York's JFK airport and Buffalo, with a low fare of $47, traffic rose by 54% and average fares fell by 20% as other carriers were forced to respond.European imitationsThe Europeans have copied Southwest, and the closest imitator, Ryanair, is even more profitable than the Texan airline (see table).
99p Stores, a Poundland imitator, is adding 30 shops a year: it has increased its profits by an average of 72% annually over the past three years.
Whatever one may think of the songs, the world-wide success of Irish rock bands is a strange and wonderful phenomenon, made stranger still by the anti-poverty evangelism so vigorously pushed by Bob Geldof and his more popular imitator, Bono.
But after realising he was known only as an imitator, a "boy" with no name of his own, he determined to make a music that was distinctively his.That music turned out to be an amalgam mostly of gospel and blues, with the gospel hotter than anyone imagined.
Meanwhile, Easdaq, a troubled European imitator of Nasdaq, got two new investors, E*Trade and Susquehanna Partners, both of America.American legislators and the White House agreed at last on a bill to amend the Glass-Steagall act, which since 1933 has separated commercial banking, the securities business and insurance.
Copying may be safer still when the imitator is not grabbing the innovator's customers: Southwest Airlines, an American discount carrier, made no objection when Ireland's Ryanair cloned its business model.Not invented hereSome businesspeople are willing to talk about the limitations of innovation.
In her place is an imitator, a "simulacrum", who looks and talks just like her.
With some 185 families all kicking in $10 a month to fund it, a turbine now lights up homes and powers a flour mill and welding equipment used to make doorframes and windows.This little co-operative, Proleki, has spawned a larger imitator.
But the dauphin should not forget that a successful reign requires a strong successor— and not a mere imitator.
