Opinion
The Rules of Co-opetition
— December 15, 2020

By Adam Brandenburger and Barry Nalebuff
By Adam Brandenburger and Barry Nalebuff
There is a name for the mix of competition and cooperation: co-opetition. In 1996, when we wrote a book about this phenomenon in business, instances of it were relatively rare. Now the practice is common in a wide range of industries, having been adopted by rivals such as Apple and Samsung, DHL and UPS, Ford and GM, and Google and Yahoo.
There are many reasons for competitors to cooperate. At the simplest level, it can be a way to save costs and avoid duplication of effort. If a project is too big or too risky for one company to manage, collaboration may be the only option. In other cases one party is better at doing A while the other is better at B, and they can trade skills. And even if one party is better at A and the other has no better B to offer, it may still make sense to share A at the right price.
Read the full Harvard Business Review article.
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Adam Brandenburger is J.P. Valles Professor