CO-OPETITION - THE BALANCE BETWEEN COOPERATION AND COMPETITION IN BUSINESS RELATIONSHIPS

An important characteristic of today's business environment is the simultaneous presence of competition and collaboration between companies, defined by Bradenburger (1996) as co-opetition. This feature broadens the area of analysis of buyer-supplier relationships and networks and offers new perspectives. Limited resources have led to new cooperation forms in many industries, achieving economies of scale and/or synergy effects. There are potential benefits in cooperating with competitors, like access to new markets, new distributors and access to valuable information, knowledge and competence. The co-opetitive perspective rises from the acknowledgment that, within inter-firm interdependence, both processes of value creation and value sharing take place, giving rise to partially convergent interests where both competitive and cooperative issues are simultaneously present and interconnected. It is an alternative way to behave in the business arena.