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When Imitation Stops Being Flattery and Starts Being Theft
This victimless crime actually creates a ton of victims
On Monday morning, I woke up, fired up my email app, and did an immediate double take.
At the top of my inbox was that morning’s Medium Daily Digest, a handy newsletter that highlights various Medium posts that Medium’s algorithms believe I might want to read on Medium. And the subject of that morning’s email was the title of a column of mine that was just published on Friday.
Only my column had been published in Inc. Magazine, not on Medium.
Then when I opened the email, I noticed the bigger discovery: The author wasn’t me, but the content was indeed mine.
And that pissed me off, but not for the reasons you might think.
No Single Idea is Unique
You can take the most original business idea you’ve ever come up with, start with a simple Google search, and if you look long enough and hard enough, you’ll find at least one established company, if not several, already doing what you want to do.
You need to do it different and better.
Furthermore, any startup or new business is going to try to reinvent as few wheels as possible. In terms of…
