Start Me Up!

Chapter 2Invention vs. Innovation

Many people believe that successful businesses must either be a.) the first to market, or b.) better at providing an existing product or service. I have always believed that the latter is generally more important and applicable than the former. For example, Friendster was one of the first social networks. Friendster was founded by computer programmers Jonathan Abrams, Ellen Lee, and Rob Pazornik in 2002, a year before the launch of MySpace (in 2003), and two years before the advent of Facebook (in 2004). Friendster was also one of the first social networking sites to have more than 1 million members sign up. As we all know, it eventually collapsed after catastrophic leadership mistakes and legendary disagreements ...