I've been silent on the subject of competition and cooperation, but Pepe's
comment about creating sustainable competitive advantage struck a dark
chord. It seems to me that in order to sustain an advantage over one's
competitors, an organization must either find something that the
industry's customers want that no other organization can - or will be able
to - provide, or else have a reliable program of staying ahead of the
competition. In a non-monopolistic economy, I don't think either is
possible for longer than it takes to copy and reproduce whatever is
creating the advantage.
Finding and using whatever gives an organization an advantage is part of
what drives our economy. But I submit that in an environment of freely
and instantly available information, this advantage is only fleeting and
cannot be sustained. What we are more likely to see in the future, IMO,
is a great deal of leap-frogging among competitors: they will make
marginal improvements over their previous products so that they look
better than the competition's last marginal improvement, and they will
occasionally find breakthroughs that will provide a temporary advantage
until the competition catches up.
What a rat race! Isn't there a better way to do business, or is this the
way to keep a healthy economy?
-- David E. Birren Phone: (608)267-2442 Wisconsin Dept. of Natural Resources Fax: (608)267-3579 Bureau of Management & Budget Internet: birred@dnr.state.wi.us . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . "To know, and not to act, is to not know." --Wang Yang Ming, 9th-century Chinese general