The results can be catastrophic. Even though there’s a psychological barrier to do so, stealing ideas from competitors is necessary.

e.g In the late 80s-90s, Future publishing, a competitor to Dennis Publishing in the UK, started to put a playable electronic game with each magazine. Felix Dennis had no interest in paying huge fees to Sony or Sega to include their games with Dennis’s magazine. And so the team at Dennis did the Ostrich and kept their traditional way of doing things in the video games magazines.

Future publishing started to get traction and sell more than Dennis in the video game magazines business. They became the reference without Dennis fighting them and copying their winning strategy.

When the team at Dennis was forced to admit that Future’s startegy was a success, it was too late.

Felix recognized the failure to copy Future‘s strategy as soon as they started to get traction. When they did recognize that Future was onto something, it was too late. They found repugnant to admit that Future had hit upon the right idea and so they refused to emulate it. So they kept losing millions.

Dennis Publishing lost millions selling the remainings of their magazines to Future and their newly created monopoly.

How to get rich, p.64