I'm probably one of the few people who have actually read the biography on the founder of "Big Blue" from cover to cover. For years his book was crammed by the boat load onto his store's shelves, but I have met very few people who bought it, much less read it. Not one to waste money, I borrowed a copy from the public library and read it.
One of personal characteristics of "Big Blue's" founder was to steal ideas from the competition. It seems the rip-off culture persists at his company even after his death. Case in point: this evening I was online going over the weekly sales circular for "Big Red" (my employer) to prepare for the week. Often I'll go look at the website for "Big Blue," just to see what they've got going on, also.
What cracks me up is that the layout, feel, and presentation of the "Big Blue" circular online is almost exactly the same as my employer's (Big Red.) It even uses the same type of web application for dynamic content, and the pages operate in the same exact way. What amazes me is how people have hailed Big Blue over the years for being "inovative" in the retail industry, when really all they do is copy anything that works well for their competition. They changed their uniforms to match ours, they have similar management structures in their stores, they carry mostly the same items, and they announced a shift to upscale marketing at about the same time we did.
About the only thing Big Blue is "innovative" in is ripping off everyone else's innovations.
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