second, you can capture the first-mover advantage, as Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart, did throughout his career. Even as his retailing rivals were catching up, he was forging ahead with new cost-cutting tactics. Intel’s dominance of the microchip industry, and 3M’s of the diversified technology industry, were based not on protecting their inventions so much as on improving them faster than everyone else. Packet switching was the invention that made the internet possible, yet nobody made any royalties out of it. The way to keep your customers, if you are Michael Dell, Steve Jobs or Bill
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