Business 2.0 has a great read on why it doesn’t matter if you’re not the first mover in an industry. Most convincing evidence from the article: “Some of the biggest successes in business are new takes on old ideas.

• 1973 – FEDERAL EXPRESS swipes the jet idea from DHL and trumps UPS by starting overnight deliveries in the United States.
• 1981 – IBM launches its PC, made from off-the-shelf parts and an OS from Bill Gates, to beat Apple and Atari.
• 1990 – TARGET opens its first Greatland, jumping on the megastore trend that worked so well for Kmart and Wal-Mart.
• 2000 – GOOGLE begins to capitalize on paid search with AdWords, now a $6 billion moneymaker–but Overture was there first, in 1998.”

A perspective client of mine is convinced they should rush the software development of their product at the expense of quality in favor of being the first mover. The above data proves my recommendation that “it doesn’t matter if the product isn’t usable.”

See Also: Uncommonly Common