Coopetition Coopetition
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Sometimes competitors can also cooperate as partners in projects or joint ventures. Coopetition15 is the result of bringing together competition and cooperation to form not just a new word but also a new partnership. A coopetition partnership is more likely when your competitive positioning is different in some way, ie your specialities and strengths are not exactly the same. Coopetition is founded on the concept that businesses do not have to fail for others to succeed. They can cooperate to enlarge the pie then compete to carve it up, each getting more than they had before. Think of London’s Charing Cross Road where booksellers compete alongside each other but at the same time combine to attract more customers to their world class street of bookshops. Motor racing’s Formula 1 industry is centred on a cluster of small specialist firms in the south of England. Similarly, ‘creative clusters’ in Liverpool, London, Helsinki, Huddersfield, Tokyo, Dublin, St Petersburg and Los Angeles attract customers by bringing together a concentration of related businesses which both compete and collaborate with each other. In a nutshell, competitive advantage is the result of selecting the customers and markets where you will be a winner. Astute choices arise from understanding your strengths and weaknesses in relation to other enterprises so that you can choose wisely whether to avoid, compete (or cooperate) with them. The winners will be the businesses who provide the quality that profitable customers want, better than anyone else.