Co-Opetition - Adam M. Brandenburger [3]
At Harvard Business School, former dean John McArthur and Mike Porter have been a constant support to Adam in his work. Anita McGahan, Dick Rosenbloom, Gus Stuart, and David Yoffie are among Adam’s colleagues who have been enthusiastic supporters and keen critics. In fact, this book wouldn’t have happened without Gus. He is a co-inventor of some of the key concepts that structure our approach.
At Princeton, Avinash Dixit got Barry started on writing books, coauthoring Thinking Strategically: The Competitive Edge in Business, Politics, and Everyday Life. Former dean Mike Levine brought Barry to the Yale School of Management and encouraged him to create a course in game theory. Sharon Oster guided Barry in the transition to business strategy.
We have been fortunate to regularly teach wonderful students at Harvard and Yale—and we learned as we taught. Our early courses on game theory and business were what you might call successful failures. We didn’t yet have the synthesis of theory and practice. The weaknesses of these early courses taught us a great deal about what was missing from our understanding. This book is the direct result of those early efforts. We thank all of our early students for bearing with us during this period of experimentation and learning.
As we developed and extended our new synthesis, we drew heavily on research provided by our students and assistants over the previous years. The students who worked on cases that appear in this book include: Greg Camp, Greg Chin, David Cowan, Michael Maples, Anna Minto, Richard Malloy, David Myers, Paul Sullivan, Bartley Troyer, Michael Tuchen, and Peter Wetenhall. The research assistants who supplied essential material include: Christine Del Ballo, Paul Barese, Monique Burnett, Maryellen Costello, Brad Ipsan, Julia Kou, Fiona Murray, Troy Paredes, Adam Raviv, Deepak Sinha, and Geoff Verter. We’ll miss Troy’s 3:00 A.M. voice mails—and his surprise when we answered the phone.
We appreciate the opportunities the following people have given us to try out these ideas in the field: Ken Chenault and Andy Wing at American Express, Charles Freeman at Chemical Bank, Robert Clement and Lynn Stair at Citibank, Jason Walsh and Jim Cooke at Corning, Ron Ferguson and T. Hoffman at General Re, Andy Shearer at KPMG Peat Marwick, Geoff Porges at Merck, Mike Keller (formerly) at Northwestern Life Insurance, Lydia Marshall at Sallie Mae, Mark Myers at Xerox. Bill Roughton at Bell Atlantic provided a unique opportunity to work on the Federal Communications Commission auction of personal communication service spectrum. Bill Barnett at McKinsey and Co. challenged us to make game theory relevant, gave us the chance to work with his clients, and was invaluable in helping us bridge the gap between theory and practice. It would be hard to give enough thanks to our corporate clients for the enormous amount they have taught us. In addition, the constant feedback from executive education programs and seminars helped us shape this book.
We are indebted to the Harvard Business Review for promoting our work and improving it along the way. The process of preparing an article proved extremely valuable. This was largely because of the encouragement and critical feedback we received from Joan Magretta, Nancy Nichols, Sharon Slodki, and Nan Stone.
When we turned to write this book, Loretta Barrett helped get us started. Helen Rees, our North American agent, and Linda Michaels, our foreign rights agent, continue to amaze us with their insights and skill. The enormous enthusiasm, confidence, and—yes—patience of Bill Thomas, our editor at Doubleday, gave the project an enormous boost throughout. Harriet Rubin, of Currency/Doubleday, provided wonderful criticism, always making sure that we had enough “trope.”
Scott Borg, novelist