[cookiecaper]

I totally agree. Innovation is not necessarily valued by the market. There is no shame in seeing what others are doing and copying it -- that's how the free market is supposed to work. The competition is good for everyone, and indeed, analyzing what's working and what's not for your predecessors and competitors can often be instructive in developing something that can eventually conquer the world, which Facebook assuredly did. 100% on board with execution being many orders of magnitude more important than the germinating idea.

However, the Winklevoss twins had hired Zuck and communicated their proprietary information so that they could get his execution. It is absolutely shady to get hired to develop a product, chicken out, and then implement your own version using your client's intellectual property. It's obvious that Zuck was in hot water here; if he wasn't, he wouldn't have paid out to the Winklevoss's.

It appears the lesson from Zuck is "take whatever you can and win, then deal with any potential consequences from a position of strength".