Mushrooms if cooked right can be delicious. Trumpet, Portobello, truffle so many varieties to be tried and enjoyed- but sometimes a wild mushroom can make you sick or worse, so discretion is key to avoid blunders.
Likewise in business, it takes one person’s idea and success for others to follow suit and mushroom. The spin off versions created from one successful business is the mushroom effect.
It is in our nature to normalize procedures and experiences once they have already worked for someone else. Like a risky outfit that looked good on someone that you would never consider putting together.
If an idea for a business is making money for one person, it’s got to make money for another. Yes? No? Maybe?
Although putting a fresh spin on a stale idea is easy, it doesn’t usually work. But don’t take my word for it, lets look at this objectively, then subjectively then obviously. The same outfit could look fabulous on one person and disastrous on another, I think that might apply to business as well.
How many movies come to your mind with the following plot- Romeo and Juliette inspired relationship story feat. Disapproving parents who eventually approve of the relationship three hours later? Or maybe a good cop with a badass attitude that a heart as big as his biceps who does macho things for over 6 songs? Or maybe a plot that follows the modern story of liberal lovers set against a beautiful foreign locale that almost always comes to a happy ending? Trying to list movies that fit these plot descriptions could be a drinking game, and that’s not to say that all the movies on that list would be bad, but there would be at least a healthy 10 candidates in each category.
In fact most movies made with these plots ignite the trend but when a successful film mushrooms into many other films with similar plotlines the story just starts to feel stale.
In the case of e commerce platforms in India, there were few that entered the market with promise and now dozens if not hundreds flood the Internet. Some acted as trailblazers and others fizzled off. Saturation kills a good thing quicker than a trend does. For example, the fact that choker necklaces and Bardot neck tops are trend pieces just means that these are interesting items that are attractive now and their appeal will fade with time. The fact that over a hundred e commerce platforms are mushrooming across the Internet to sell these choker necklaces causes saturation in the market that makes the audience bored of the platform selling the item before being bored of the item itself.
Similarly, today there is an app for every need, and for each category of need there are numerous others offering a similar if not the same service. A popular face-editing app on the iPhone and android market offers customers the ability to perfect their images for maximum effect; for the same function over a dozen apps exist to choose from.
Perhaps this is not a problem specific to the Indian market and perhaps it’s just a side effect of fast moving technologies, that successful products and models will inspire knock offs faster than they will competition. Perhaps we live in a time where most things have been done and so many of us exist that too many people are chasing a common goal.
So how do we protect originality in a time where it is so easy to remodel something that already works? Every once in a while a movie comes out that is a trailblazer, or an app is introduced that makes its way to every phone with just word of mouth advertising.
Not all ideas have the potential to morph into successful brands and the ones that do often mushroom into half-baked versions of the original. That’s not to say that ideas with merit should not be pursued, but if the idea is extremely similar to an already existing venture with fewer creases, then maybe that’s a wild mushroom that is best avoided.
