When to Team Up with Your Competition

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Business, Hbr, Business/entrepreneurship, Innovation, Strategy, Business/management, Management, Communication, Harvard, Entrepreneurship, Business/marketing, Leadership, Marketing, Finance, Economics, Teams

4.3 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 8 December 2020

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Barry Nalebuff, professor at Yale School of Management and cofounder of Honest Tea, says too many companies shy away from cooperating with a competitor, and they’re leaving value on the table. He says even when working with other companies to find mutual benefits is not a clear win, cooperating may still be better than not cooperating. He shares how Honest Tea, Apple, Ford, and other firms analyze and capitalize on opportunities without giving up their secret sauce. Nalebuff is the author, with NYU Stern professor Adam Brandenburger, of the HBR article "The Rules of Co-opetition."

Transcript

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0:00.0	How do you navigate gender in your workplace?
0:04.0	HBR's fan favorite podcast Women at Work is back with personal stories, the newest research,
0:09.6	and practical advice on navigating divorce, disability, and career failures.
0:14.0	Listen for free to H.B.
0:16.0	Women at Work wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the HBR Ideacast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Kurt Nickish.
0:37.0	I'm Kurt Nickish. In the summer of 1997, Apple was on the verge of failure.
0:49.0	Steve Jobs confronted the reality and turned to the enemy for help, Microsoft invested $150 million in
0:57.0	Apple, a key cash infusion in its rival in business.
1:01.8	It came as a shock to many. Some analysts questioned why
1:05.2	Microsoft would keep its rival afloat and Apple loyalists couldn't understand why
1:10.2	their great competitor in the personal computing business was now part owner.
1:15.1	And relationships that are destructive don't help anybody in this industry as it is today.
1:23.0	This is how it sounded when jobs announced the deal at the Macworld Conference.
1:27.4	And I'd like to announce one of our first partnerships today, a very, very meaningful one. and that is one with Microsoft.
1:38.4	Now that moment is seen as a key turning point for Apple and a profitable one for Microsoft that also gave it
1:44.7	protection for more regulatory scrutiny. Both of these fierce rivals cooperated to
1:50.1	their benefit. Today's guest says this idea of co-opetition holds a lot of promise, but that
1:56.4	too many companies are still afraid to go into it for the fear of risks, and honestly, because
2:01.3	they don't totally understand how to go about it strategically.
2:04.3	And he's here to explain how to think it through and make it work for you.
2:07.8	Barry Nail Buff is a professor at Yale School of Management and he's the
2:12.3	co-author with Adam Brandenburg of the
	...

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