Somewhere along the way, "copycat" became an insult. Lean on someone who's gone ahead of you, and people call it weak. Unoriginal. A limiting strategy. Yet every one of us started that way. Your first words as a child were syllables you heard from a parent, repeated back before you understood what they meant. Nobody called that weakness. We called it learning. It doesn't stop being learning because you grew up. Big companies stay ahead by watching smaller rivals and copying what works....