co-opetition

Combination of competitive and cooperative approaches to doing business. The competitive approach to business views business as similar to warfare while cooperative approaches embrace the ideas of teams and partnerships. The concept of co-opetition was introduced by Adam Brandenburger from Harvard Business School and Barry Nalebuff from Yale School of Management.

Co-opetition incorporates elements of game theory, treating business as a game that requires strategies to shape the game to suit a company. The word co-opetition was coined by Ray Noorda, founder of the networking software company Novell.