Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Friendly enemies

Meet frienemies: rivals turned partners

Big corporate honchos that have always been on the prowl for each other’s blood suddenly stand united. savreen gadhoke analyses the reason behind this change...

Remember the critically acclaimed film Corporate (by Madhur Bhandarkar), where towards the end, the two arch business rivals happily join hands? And if you thought that it was too unrealistic and such things could happen only in our Bollywood masala flicks, you better get your facts right... Interestingly, over the past year, there have been several instances where arch-rivals have come together to leverage the synergies from ‘symbiotic’ tie-ups. While on one hand, all three telecom bigwigs – Vodafone-Essar, Bharti Infratel and Idea Cellular came together to merge their wireless-network, Richard Branson-owned Virgin Mobile too joined hands with Tata Teleservices (TTSL) to launch its services in India.

Competitors?! Nahhh.... It’s co-opetitiors now! And such brutally has this trend caught onto capitalistic entities that even arch rivals Hindustan Times and Times of India have become one and launched their tabloid Metro Now. Interesting and good so far...

And now comes the real catch: how have these “Oh! I’ll kill you” foes suddenly turned into bosom-bretheren of sorts? (How they did it so gracefully is a question for another day.) “It is purely a business deal... At the end of the day, profit is the bottom-line of every business and this is a win-win situation for both the players,” avers a Reliance Retail official. Certainly, in this fierce battlefield, big-corporate honchos now seem to have realised that in order to survive, they have to fight with not one or two, but several competitors; and for this, strategies, covert business tactics, underhand ploys, et al, may not at all be sufficient in the game of ‘one man standing’. One has to be shrewd enough to win not just on the battlefield (read market), not just the artillery (read profits), but mind-games as well! So to befriend one or two is the way to be (instead of competing with one and all). And that’s what they call ‘co-opetition’, that is, to co-operate with your competitor and compete with the rest, resulting in fantastic pay-offs!

For Complete IIPM Article, Click on IIPM Article

Source :
IIPM Editorial, 2008
An IIPM and Professor Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist) Initiative

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