Co-Opetition - Adam M. Brandenburger [132]
• How do other players perceive the game? How do these perceptions affect the play of the game?
• Which perceptions would you like to preserve? Which perceptions would you like to change?
• Do you want the game to be transparent or opaque?
Scope Questions
• What is the current scope of the game? Do you want to change it?
• Do you want to link the current game to other games?
• Do you want to delink the current game from other games?
The more you ask yourself these questions, not just casually, but in an orderly, disciplined way, the more opportunities you’ll find for improving your game. It’s important to think methodically about changing the game. That’s the great strength of the game theory approach: it helps you to see the whole game.
What you don’t see, you can’t change. By identifying all the players and all the interdependences, game theory expands your repertoire of strategies for changing the game. At the same time, it helps you to evaluate each proposed change more exhaustively and, hence, more reliably. It encourages you to try out the perspectives of other players in order to understand how they’ll respond to your new strategies. Out of this more comprehensive vision comes a set of strategies that is richer and more dependable.
The Bigger “Bigger Picture”
Our aim in writing this book was to paint a more complete picture of business relationships. Co-opetition is in the air, and we want to encourage this shift away from the focus on competition that has dominated much of business strategy. In particular, we want to counter the embattled mindset that can cause players to miss opportunities to expand the pie.
Finding a better game to play doesn’t have to come at the expense of others. This perspective makes it easier to find the best strategies, whether cooperative or competitive. In some of the cases we discussed in this book, defeating others was the best strategy and the result was win-lose. Sometimes, that is the answer. But we don’t want to presume it’s the only answer before we start. Oftentimes, the best strategy has multiple winners. In this book, we saw many instances of companies finding ways to capture a bigger slice of pie by growing the entire pie. Looking for ways to expand the pie, while keeping an eye on capturing the pie, helps promote a benevolent attitude toward other players, while at the same time keeping you tough-minded and protective of your own interests.
Business is cooperation when it comes to creating a pie, and competition when it comes to dividing it up. This duality can easily make business relationships feel paradoxical. But learning to be comfortable with this duality is the key to success.
We want this book to change the game of business. By suggesting ways to make the pie bigger, we hope to make business both more profitable and more satisfying. By suggesting ways to change the game, we hope to keep business dynamic and forward-looking. By challenging the status quo, we say things can be done differently—and better. And that is our challenge to you.
NOTES
1. War and Peace
1. Drawing on the work of Anne Hollander, Eric Nash points out that the clothing people wear to work also comes from war: the tie was long called a cravat, after the seventeenth-century Croatian mercenaries who wore them on French battlefields; the vestigial brass loops on trench coats are actually grenade hooks; the tailored suit can be traced back to the linen padding worn under a suit of armor; men’s coats unbutton from the left so that a right-handed man might draw a sword or gun quickly. See Style column, New York Times Magazine, July 30, 1995, p. 39. Also see Anne Hollander, Sex and Suits (New York: Knopf, 1994).
2. This is a commonly quoted statistic. See the Seattle Times, April 24, 1994, p. Al, and Inc., April 1994, p. 52. It was (successfully) used in testimony to the U.S. Congress subcommittee on aviation to help the airlines get a two-year exemption from the fuel tax (see FDCH Congressional Hearings Summaries, March 22, 1995). The net income