Love him or hate him, Bob Parsons is an interesting guy. I was browsing his blog last night and caught an old post of his about Sony (How Sony Got to be Great). He quotes Sony co-founder Masura Ibuka who said, “You never succeed in technology, business or anything by following the others.” I love this concept. Not that it should be your only modus operandi, but it counter-balances the tendency to try and stay up on every little thing happening in your markets and paying acute attention to your competition. More innovation, less imitation.

I read this post and thought about Van Halen (of course!). I’ve heard that Eddie Van Halen doesn’t listen to other people’s music much and certainly not for inspiration. I heard this from a critic who was whining about how Van Halen sounds the same after x number of albums. The beauty of this is that Van Halen sounds like Van Halen and nobody else. It wouldn’t be the same if the guys had tried to imitate Led Zeppelin. Van Halen would be a watered-down copy of the original like so many grunge bands where in 1993.

Bob then goes on and talks about how he has applied the principle inside of GoDaddy. From a IT standpoint, a lot of times it’s easier to just use whatever solutions are hot this month, especially where open-source is as prevalent as it is. But, sometimes is makes a lot more sense for your individual firm to go your own way. This was certainly the case at First Health, where I developed a Learning Management System for e-learning across the enterprise. There were numerous solutions commercially available. But we had a pretty clear vision of what we wanted and the other solutions were essential square pegs for a round hole. So, we went our own way, developed our own system, and in the end, there was nothing like us around. We offered a uniquely rich and interactive form of online training and our users loved it, after being subjected to the common, dry, ‘page-turner’ stuff for so long.

Also, it makes me think about market evaluation. I personally get caught up a lot in thinking about potential markets and their viability. The thing is, a lot of entrepreneurs I know didn’t spend a lot of time thinking if the market was truly a good opportunity for them or not. They just got to work. Skip the analysis paralysis. Action first, Guy Kawasaki-style. Of course, I don’t advocate reckless enterprising, but it’s a great counter-balance to getting caught up in details and information that doesn’t necessarily (have to) matter.