When to copy a competitor (and when not to)
There's a respectable case for copying. There's also a way to do it that quietly kills your product. The line is more useful than the slogans about it.
"Never copy" and "copy everything" are both wrong. The interesting question is: when is copying the highest-leverage move, and when is it slow suicide?
Copy table stakes. Don't copy positioning.
If the competitor has solved the same boring problem your customers have — onboarding flow, password reset, billing portal — copy it. There's no edge in reinventing standard surfaces. But if you copy their positioning, their pricing, their target customer, you've lost the only thing that makes you a distinct option.
Copy the workflow, change the stance
It's fine to learn from how a competitor sequences a flow. It's not fine to mirror their philosophy. The workflow is execution; the stance is identity. Copy execution, keep your stance.
Steal patterns. Never steal positioning.