About two years ago, I lived behind a traditional burger and fries restaurant called Chadder's. The restaurant was brand new; it had taken the place of a previously vacant building. Chadder's seemed to be decently priced with good food reasonable traffic from college students who lived in the apartment complexes nearby. I assumed it would be successful based on the location. I personally only ate at Chadder's once, but I enjoyed the food and would have willingly returned to the restaurant, until I moved to another part of town and forgot about it. Close to a year after Chadder's opened, I drove by the restaurant and saw that it had closed. I couldn't believe that the restaurant failed so quickly, although I imagine that the prices were too high for the average quality of food, especially with several other fast food franchises nearby. 
You can imagine my surprise when, only a three or four months later, a new burger and fries diner opened in the building that had previously been Chadder's. The new restaurant, T's, promises diner style shakes, fries, and burgers, with prices very similar to Chadder's. I now drive by T's every day on my way to school, fully expecting to see that it will close within the next year. I can't help but think that the new owners of T's did not pay attention to Chadder's over the course of the previous year--otherwise they would realize that a their restaurant, nearly interchangeable with Chadder's, would not survive in that location. I predict that the lack of innovation will lead to the restaurant's failure within a few months.Most people realize that Shakespeare's work was largely based off of popular stories and other theatrical performances. He often re-purposed stories, slightly modifying characters or plot elements, then wrote them into plays as his own work. Not only was he able to recognize good characters and plot, he was able to improve them by making small changes that would appeal more to his audiences. For now, I'd like to suggest that one of Shakespeare's strengths as an entrepreneur was recognizing good ideas and innovating to make them even more successful. In a later post, I'd like to expand this idea by analyzing one of his works in comparison to the source work. In the mean time you can learn more about my pursuit of Shakespeare as a product by visiting a previous post, Aesthetic Tastes in Shakespeare.
