How ethical is it to "steal" competitors' ideas?

Question

Some of you know that I have been building [LightCat.io](http://lightcat.io) for Product Teams and many of you have been incredibly supportive of the journey.

What I have found really amusing is that many competitors, having raised millions of dollars, have features that are not hard to build, and sometimes even improve upon.

For example, LightCat has a Feature Prioritisation scheme which is better than most of the competition  out there, BUT is inspired from ProductBoard.

And it's available for $0 or $9 instead of $49 to $199 per user.

This pricing is possible for me because a large company has many overhead costs , and I just have my family.

There is no legal issue here because feature concepts aren't copyrighted.

But I do have an ethical dilemma of sorts. I can sure think up feature UX from scratch - but that takes time. On the other hand, I can sort of leech upon the hard work others have done, even if they are competitors, and likely make it better (read simpler) to use.

What do you think?

Alex Arevalo · Accepted Answer

@kush_apoorva

"Good Artists Copy; Great Artists Steal"

My experience in the product management world, most products, new features, or enhancements are merely just trying to align with the best in class for the industry with your own personal flair.

Some businesses are purely based in stealing a business model of another company and applying it to their own industry (food delivery apps UI/UX copies Uber's). Coming up with creative solutions is being open to learning (stealing) from your competition.

Denrric · Answer

Don't worry about it. If you think like that nothing will be possible. It's not stealing it's just an inspiration.

kush · Answer

@jacobbs Thanks Jacob.

kush · Answer

@alex_arevalo Great way to put it Alex. Thanks.

How ethical is it to "steal" competitors' ideas?

Replies