Modelling and analysis of co-opetition in network industries by biform games

In today's economy, many activities are networked. The importance of network industries that deliver products and services is growing. Traditionally, only the effects of competition have been analysed within networks. Companies are increasingly finding that even the cooperation of competitors can bring benefits to all involved. The concept of co-opetition is a mix of competition and cooperation that captures the advantages of both approaches and also changes the business environment. The paper present models and analyses of co-opetition in network industries using biform games as a combination of the non-cooperative and cooperative games theory. The paper proposes the division of the biform games into sequential and simultaneous games. Sequential biform games can be solved consequently by application of non-cooperative and cooperative approaches. Simultaneous biform games can be solved by negotiation using both game approaches at the same time. The models analyse network industries in terms of the total number of members and the number of cooperating members in terms of prices for services and network access fees and are solved by simultaneous biform games. Network interconnections are also analysed, where networks not only provide services on their own network, but also allow access to foreign networks. The model can be solved as a sequential biform game.