In business, it’s always about being the best, looking out for number one, beating your competitor—right? Not so fast, says Professor Shahzad Ansari, who teaches strategy and innovation at Cambridge’s Judge Business School.
In a recent news article, Ansari presented a different idea. “You don’t need to blow out someone else’s light to make yours shine,” he said, quoting financier Bernard Baruch. “Going in too aggressively harms your own reputation and can wreck your business,” he added.
In fact, Ansari thinks that too many companies take the wrong approach and end up blundering because they’re too busy focusing on taking out their rivals. Instead, he recommends that businesses learn to work together with their competitors to expand the industry as a whole.
“Businesses have to work within an ecosystem,” he explained as part of the news article. “You’re reliant on other organizations to do their job, which makes it possible for you to do yours. If you’re intent on shaking up an industry, you have to work within that ecosystem, not alienate it.”
His research went onto to talk about the “disruptor’s dilemma”—using TiVo’s aggressive entrance into the TV industry as a case in point. The company was so aggressive in its approach to changing how TV was watched that they ticked off the TV networks, the very organizations they needed to survive. TiVo’s disruptive approach all but led to its own destruction. Fortunately, TiVo realized its mistake before it was too late. Only once TiVo began working with network TV did it stick around. Other competitors—unwilling to bend—didn’t.
And TiVo’s example is just one of many. Ansari also spoke about Uber, which similarly came out too strong and against its competition, resulting in it being banned in parts of Europe.
The key is to use “co-opetition” instead of competition, the Judge professor argues. According to Ansari, a good business strategy requires you to think broadly and to include your competitors in your decisions. Being a disruptor will online alienate your organization and ensure that you fail. “But embrace co-opetition, work with the ecosystem and add to the growth of the whole industry, and that way everyone can get a bigger slice of a bigger pie.”
This post has been republished in its entirety from its original source, metromba.com.
