Definition

The resulting competitive condition when an operator, having misread a filled market as a vacant one (a Bad-Read of Gap Arbitrage), builds a copy of an existing business instead of a true gap-fill. The operator inherits the original’s ceiling and plays inside the frame the original operator already set.

Explanation

This names the trap that follows a specific misread: mistaking “nobody’s doing this exact thing near me” for “there’s a real gap here” when what’s actually happened is a competitor down the road already occupies the category and simply isn’t visible from where the operator is standing.

Building into that condition doesn’t create a gap-fill business — it creates a copy, and copies inherit the original’s ceiling rather than building their own. The operator is now playing [Catch-Up Ball] inside a frame someone else set, which is a structurally worse position than either finding a genuine gap or entering a category with a genuinely differentiated build.