Successful businesses are run by people who don’t imitate others, according to Association of Financial Advisers (AFA) President Brad Fox.

“Don’t imitate what the best do; learn to think how they think,” he told an AFA event last week.

“Learn to innovate the way they innovate,” he said. “But don’t just copy someone else’s recipe, because it’s not the pathway to long-term, sustainable success.”

The advice was one of a series of insights from Mr Fox’s recent visit to the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

He says he realised from case studies that successful businesses often learned from the experience of failing.

“They were consistently trying new things and failing often, quick and cheap,” he said. “It’s what you do with the failure that counts.

“It’s all right to fail. It’s just that there’s a right and a wrong way to go about doing it.”

He says when “conformists” get small risks right or wrong the results are fairly neutral. But when an innovator takes a risk and gets it wrong, they are seen as a radical or a loser.

“What happens when they get it right? They’re a winner or a genius.”

Mr Fox says knowing the competitive advantage of a business is important, as is building a culture of leadership and creating relationships of mutual trust and interdependence between advisers and clients.

“One of the great secrets to starting change is to know your people,” he said.