Posted on September 8, 2008 - by Jeffrey Posner

Cooperative Competition

I go back and forth on this topic from time to time; sometimes I feel it’s good and sometimes not. In any negotiation, there is a winner and a looser. Same goes with cooperative completion. If you are all trying to work together, there has been some sort of agreement or verbal understanding that everyone has come too.
This situation is no different.

The reason I go back and forth on the subject I because when it’s good for me, I like it and when it’s bad for me, I don’t…We’ll Duh!

Recently a business associate of mine came back and wanted to work together after we had previously talked about doing something exclusive. Since that, he had gone and basically slept with everyone else in the business and currently has some sort of light partnership with them. Business is business so I am not offended that he went a different direction.

What did offend me is when he came back though, it’s like he figured we would naturally join the herd since everyone else did. When I declined, he sent me a quick response saying he was only offering since he had promised in the past and he didn’t want to renege. Right… So cooperative competition is good, if you are receiving most of the benefit. It’s never equal and someone always has more to gain or is making more money than the other. Can there really be an truly equal cooperative competition strategy?