During business school
(MBA) studies students are often assigned to read a book by a German
General, Von Clausewitz. In his book he talked about waging war (real war) and
one of his major points is that everything in war is reciprocal.
That is, according to von
Clausewitz, what is good for me must be bad for my competitors, what’s bad
for me must be good for my competitors, and vice versa.
For years this is exactly
how many business people have been taught and how they have conducted
themselves.
Take, for instance,
Wallgreens and CVS. Under the Clausewitz principle of reciprocity if CVS opens
a store from which it might benefit by gaining market share Walgreen’s must
counter by opening their own store in close vicinity! That’s why one often sees
both very close to each other.
One of the things that
Michael Porter discusses in his video (see this lesson’s assignment) is the
concept that perhaps competition is not always a reciprocal affair. Porter
posits that there may be the opportunity for entities within the five
forces, or even outright competitors, to collaborate and grow the market.
So… for this weeks
discussion, let’s identify industries that exhibit this type of
“collaborative competition”, then identify an industry that perhaps
does not and outline how this new approach might be done, and how it could
benefit all competitors.
During business school
(MBA) studies students are often assigned to read a book by a German
General, Von Clausewitz. In his book he talked about waging war (real war) and
one of his major points is that everything in war is reciprocal.That is, according to von
Clausewitz, what is good for me must be bad for my competitors, what’s bad
for me must be good for my competitors, and vice versa.For years this is exactly
how many business people have been taught and how they have conducted
themselves.Take, for instance,
Wallgreens and CVS. Under the Clausewitz principle of reciprocity if CVS opens
a store from which it might benefit by gaining market share Walgreen’s must
counter by opening their own store in close vicinity! That’s why one often sees
both very close to each other.One of the things that
Michael Porter discusses in his video (see this lesson’s assignment) is the
concept that perhaps competition is not always a reciprocal affair. Porter
posits that there may be the opportunity for entities within the five
forces, or even outright competitors, to collaborate and grow the market.So… for this weeks
discussion, let’s identify industries that exhibit this type of
“collaborative competition”, then identify an industry that perhaps
does not and outline how this new approach might be done, and how it could
benefit all competitors.
