Coopetition ?

My friend and colleague, John Soper, and I spent some time last year thinking about collaboration amongst competitors: Coopetition. Having worked at Novell during their heyday as an alliance magnet, I practiced strategies every day but hadn't tried to explain what we did; what we discovered.

Every alliance is potentially Coopetitative. Successful BD executives need to be skilled in recognizing and managing in that context, or risk being outmaneuvered.

We defined two types of Coopetition:

First Order, where an alliance is formed between two competitors (A and B). That competitive overlap ranges from small to very large. Such alliances are usually driven by customer demand or competitive threat: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Industry standards often play a role in these alliances.

Examples about in the market today? On the large scale, Oracle and IBM work together to optimize Oracle databases and applications on IBM hardware, and Oracle applications running with IBM infrastructure software. Clearly, major market forces are at play here. These two companies compete fiercely across Database and Infrastructure software and services, and are about to compete in hardware as well! Coopetition is typical for small companies forming alliances with major players, but examples between small companies are less prevalent, probably because most have simpler product portfolios, so the competitive overlap is large.

The Second Order of Coopetition involves at least three parties (A, B, and C). A forms alliances with B and C, where B and C are significant competitors.

Look at any major vendor (BMC, IBM, Oracle, McAfee, Microsoft) partner program to see examples. The IBM hardware team has close alliances with both SAP and Oracle.

We deemed the imagined 3rd - Nth order cases to be mostly noise unless they reach Second Order status.

So, why do you care? A company trying to approach an alliance partner with First or Second Order Coopetitiion must consider the impact of the overlap on potential marketing and business outcomes, adjust the proposed joint value proposition, and handle the potential competition on both sides. To do otherwise risks a strategic misstep.

If there are complex interrelationships, it can be helpful to plot competing and collaborative products on a “core-context” dimension – the degree of Coopetition then becomes apparent.

In these days of industry consolidation, even if your partner is not a Competitor yet, they may become so soon. So, it is always worth spending time understanding the competitive posture of your potential partners and adjusting strategies and the joint value proposition accordingly.

A value proposition that grows the pie and achieves business goals for both parties will usually trump a critical or peripheral competitive threat!

Back to my coffee.

Michael