Coopetition (book)

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Coopetition

Coopetition - bookcover.jpg

Softcover edition
Author Adam M. Brandenburger and Barry J. Nalebuff
Country United States
Language English
Subject Strategy, game theory, coopetition
Genre Non-fiction
Publisher Crown Business
Publication date
May 1, 1996
Media type Print, e-book
Pages 304 pp.
ISBN 978-0385479509

Co-Opetition: A Revolution Mindset that Combines Competition and Cooperation is a non-fiction book on coopetition, business strategy, and game theory by Adam M. Brandenburger and Barry J. Nalebuff. [1] The book was initially published by Crown Business on May 1, 1996. As of 2015, the book is still available in its 9th printing.

Coopetition or co-opetition is a neologism coined to describe cooperative competition. Coopetition is a portmanteau of cooperation and competition. Basic principles of co-opetitive structures have been described in game theory, a scientific field that received more attention with the book Theory of Games and Economic Behavior in 1944 and the works of John Forbes Nash on non-cooperative games. Coopetition occurs both at inter-organizational or intra-organizational levels.

Game theory is the study of mathematical models of strategic interaction between rational decision-makers. It has applications in all fields of social science, as well as in logic and computer science. Originally, it addressed zero-sum games, in which one person's gains result in losses for the other participants. Today, game theory applies to a wide range of behavioral relations, and is now an umbrella term for the science of logical decision making in humans, animals, and computers.

Contents

Overview

Coopetition or co-opetition is a neologism coined to describe the concept of cooperative competition. Coopetition is a portmanteau of cooperation and competition.

A portmanteau or portmanteau word is a linguistic blend of words, in which parts of multiple words or their phones (sounds) are combined into a new word, as in smog, coined by blending smoke and fog, or motel, from motor and hotel. In linguistics, a portmanteau is defined as a single morph that represents two or more morphemes.

The text discusses at length the notion of coopetition, a business strategy gained from game theory to demonstrate when it is better for competitors to work together rather than to go up against one another in contest. The authors use many examples to show the simultaneous interplay between competition and cooperation. [2] Their research added to previous industry analysis such as Porter’s five forces model, which focused almost entirely on competition.

Review

At one time or another, everyone wants life to be more rational and scientific. Then we wouldn't have to spend so much late-night time on the phone with friends, playing out scenarios of the possibilities life offers. Corporate executives aren't exempt from this desire. They too spin scenarios, of the bottom-line variety. This must have been the audience Adam M. Brandenburger and Barry J. Nalebuff had in mind when they wrote Co-opetition, a book about "the game theory strategy that's changing the game of business," as they put it. Mr. Brandenburger, a Harvard Business School professor, and Mr. Nalebuff, who teaches at the Yale School of Management, believe businesses can become more competitive by cooperating, hence the neologism "co-opetition." ... The authors never really make clear what distinguishes game theory from good business sense. Decision-making is looking upside, downside, matching advantage against disadvantage, marrying a weakness to a strength and occasionally doing something "counterintuitive" that actually makes complete sense in context. Since the book is full of good stories, it's hard not to recommend it, but readers looking for science are likely to be disappointed.

—Review by Strategy+Business [3]

See also

Complementors are businesses that directly sell a product or service that complement the product or service of another company by adding value to mutual customers; for example, Intel and Microsoft, or Microsoft and McAfee.

Competitive altruism is a possible mechanism for the persistence of cooperative behaviors, specifically those that are performed unconditionally. The theory of reciprocal altruism can be used to explain behaviors that are performed by a donor who receives some sort of benefit in the future. When no such compensation is received, however, reciprocity fails to explain altruistic behavior.

Frenemy

"Frenemy" is an oxymoron and a portmanteau of "friend" and "enemy" that refers to "a person with whom one is friendly, despite a fundamental dislike or rivalry" or "a person who combines the characteristics of a friend and an enemy". The term is used to describe personal, geopolitical and commercial relationships both among individuals and groups or institutions. This term also describes a competitive friendship.

Related Research Articles

Strategy is a high level plan to achieve one or more goals under conditions of uncertainty. In the sense of the "art of the general", which included several subsets of skills including "tactics", siegecraft, logistics etc., the term came into use in the 6th century C.E. in East Roman terminology, and was translated into Western vernacular languages only in the 18th century. From then until the 20th century, the word "strategy" came to denote "a comprehensive way to try to pursue political ends, including the threat or actual use of force, in a dialectic of wills" in a military conflict, in which both adversaries interact.

Competition rivalry between organisms, animals, individuals, groups, etc.

Competition is, in general, a contest or rivalry between two or more entities, organisms, animals, individuals, economic groups or social groups, etc., for territory, a niche, for scarce resources, goods, for mates, for prestige, recognition, for awards, for group or social status, or for leadership and profit. It arises whenever at least two parties strive for a goal which cannot be shared, where one's gain is the other's loss.

In the field of management, strategic management involves the formulation and implementation of the major goals and initiatives taken by an organization's top management on behalf of owners, based on consideration of resources and an assessment of the internal and external environments in which the organization operates.

In business, a competitive advantage is the attribute that allows an organization to outperform its competitors. A competitive advantage may include access to natural resources, such as high-grade ores or a low-cost power source, highly skilled labor, geographic location, high entry barriers, and access to new technology.

Porters five forces analysis framework to analyse level of competition within an industry

Porter's Five Forces Framework is a tool for analyzing competition of a business. It draws from industrial organization (IO) economics to derive five forces that determine the competitive intensity and, therefore, the attractiveness of an industry in terms of its profitability. An "unattractive" industry is one in which the effect of these five forces reduces overall profitability. The most unattractive industry would be one approaching "pure competition", in which available profits for all firms are driven to normal profit levels. The five-forces perspective is associated with its originator, Michael E. Porter of Harvard University. This framework was first published in Harvard Business Review in 1979.

Marketing strategy is a long-term, forward-looking approach to planning with the fundamental goal of achieving a sustainable competitive advantage. Strategic planning involves an analysis of the company's strategic initial situation prior to the formulation, evaluation and selection of market-oriented competitive position that contributes to the company's goals and marketing objectives.

Michael Porter American engineer and economist

Michael Eugene Porter is an American academic known for his theories on economics, business strategy, and social causes. He is the Bishop William Lawrence University Professor at Harvard Business School, and he was one of the founders of the consulting firm The Monitor Group and FSG, a social impact consultancy. He is credited for creating Porter's five forces analysis, which is instrumental in business strategy development today.

Evolutionary game theory (EGT) is the application of game theory to evolving populations in biology. It defines a framework of contests, strategies, and analytics into which Darwinian competition can be modelled. It originated in 1973 with John Maynard Smith and George R. Price's formalisation of contests, analysed as strategies, and the mathematical criteria that can be used to predict the results of competing strategies.

Avinash Dixit American economist

Avinash Kamalakar Dixit is an Indian-American economist. He was the John J. F. Sherrerd '52 University Professor of Economics Emeritus at Princeton University, Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Economics at Lingnan University, senior research fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford and Sanjaya Lall Senior Visiting Research Fellow at Green Templeton College, Oxford.

Barry J. Nalebuff is a Milton Steinbach Professor of Management at Yale School of Management. He is an expert in business strategy and game theory, as well as many other topics.

The six forces model is an analysis model used to give a holistic assessment of any given industry and identify the structural underlining drivers of profitability and competition. The model is an extension of the Porter's five forces model proposed by Michael Porter in his 1979 article published in the Harvard Business Review "How Competitive Forces Shape Strategy". The sixth force was proposed in the mid-1990s. The model provides a framework of six key forces that should be considered when defining corporate strategy to determine the overall attractiveness of an industry.

A strategic move in game theory is an action taken by a player outside the defined actions of the game in order to gain a strategic advantage and increase one's payoff. Strategic moves can either be unconditional moves or response rules. The key characteristics of a strategic move are that it involves a commitment from the player, meaning the player can only restrict her own choices, and that the commitment has to be credible, meaning that once employed it must be in the interest of the player to follow through with the move. Credible moves should also be observable to the other players.

Open coopetition

In R&D management and systems development, open coopetition or open-coopetition is a neologism to describe cooperation among competitors in the open-source arena.The term was first coined by the scholars Jose Teixeira and Tingting Lin to describe how rival firms that, while competing with similar products in the same markets, collaborate which each other in the development of open-source projects.

<i>Thinking Strategically</i> book by Avinash Dixit

Thinking Strategically: The Competitive Edge in Business, Politics, and Everyday Life is a non-fiction book by Indian-American economist Avinash Dixit and Barry Nalebuff, a professor of economics and management at Yale School of Management. The text was initially published by W. W. Norton & Company on February 1, 1991.

Seth Goldman is an American businessman. He is the president and CEO of Honest Tea, which he co-founded in 1998 with his former business school professor, Barry Nalebuff.

<i>Profit from the Core</i> Business strategy book

Profit from the Core: Growth Strategy in an Era of Turbulence is a non-fiction book on business strategy by American business consultant Chris Zook with James Allen. This is the first book in his Profit from the Core trilogy. The book is followed by Beyond the Core released in 2004 and Unstoppable in 2007.

<i>Beyond the Core</i> Business book

Beyond the Core: Expand Your Market Without Abandoning Your Roots is a non-fiction book by American business consultant Chris Zook. This is the second book in his Profit from the Core trilogy, followed by Unstoppable released in 2007.

Co-opetition or coopetition – simultaneous competition and cooperation – is an important philosophy or strategy that goes beyond the conventional rules of competition and cooperation to achieve advantages of both. Global co-opetition, an application of co-opetition in a global context, is first systematically addressed in Luo’s (2004) book “Coopetition in international business”. According to this book, global co-opetition refers to the simultaneous competition and cooperation between multinational enterprises (MNEs) and their geographically dispersed business stakeholders such as global rivals, global suppliers, global distributors, global alliance partners, and foreign governments as well as among foreign subsidiaries within an MNE.

Giovanni Battista Dagnino is an Italian Economist. He is full professor of Business Economics and Management at the Libera Università Maria SS. Assunta University of Rome. Since 2001 he has conducted pioneering work on coopetition strategy, and, with Richard D'Aveni and Ken Smith, has inaugurated the study of temporary competitive advantage as a consequence of hypercompetition.

References