Apple finally has a folding phone, seven years after Samsung shipped its first one. For years the story was that Apple had missed the future. This week is a good time to talk about why first mover advantage can be one of the most expensive myths in business.

The iPhone Ultra, unveiled at Apple’s September 9 event at a price north of $2,000, enters a market Samsung has owned for seven generations of devices, currently selling at record pre-order numbers. Apple’s answer to “what took so long” was simple: it refused to ship the rough drafts.

The first mover advantage myth

Everybody remembers who was first. Nobody checks what first cost them.

Samsung spent seven years finding every crease, every hinge failure, every cracked screen. In public. On paying customers. That is what being first actually buys: you pay the market’s tuition, and everyone behind you audits the class for free. Sometimes first wins anyway. But first is a label. Ready is a decision.

You do not fight on the enemy’s timeline

There is a rule I lived by in the SEAL Teams:

You move when the conditions are yours: your ground, your hour, your terms. The worst reason to move is that the other side just did. Their launch, their announcement, their sprint. None of it is your mission. All of it is bait, and ambitious teams take that bait every single week.

Patient or stalling: the test

Now the honest part, because this is where leaders lie to themselves. There is a difference between waiting on conditions and hiding behind them.

Plenty of teams call fear “patience” and stall for years with nothing to show for it. Apple was not idle for seven years. It was building the version worth its name.

So here is the test, and it works on any decision you are sitting on.

Waiting on a named condition is a plan. Waiting on a feeling is the Resistance winning quietly. I know I have told you to attack early and often, and I meant it. In our culture, yes comes first. But then the plan tells you when.

Apply it this week

1. Pick the decision you have been sitting on. Finish this sentence: “I am waiting for ___.”
2. If you can fill the blank, put a date on it.
3. If you can’t, that is the week’s work: figure out what belongs there.

Take it to your team

Read these out loud Monday morning. No yes-or-no answers allowed.

• Which of our projects exists only because a competitor moved first?
• Pick one thing we are waiting on. What exactly is the condition?
• Where has being first cost us more than being right?

First mover advantage is real for the mover who is also ready. For everyone else it is a seven-year tuition bill with someone else’s name on the diploma. Move when the conditions are yours.

Keep your eyes on the target. — Errol