The big question
Competition or Collaboration? Which leads to the most beneficial solutions and Why?
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7 Comments:
I thought about it a bit, and I came to the conclusion, that these two terms are not mutually exclusive, but rather different ways to look at the same thing. Collaboration is socially sanctioned way of competition, and competition will end up being a collaboration in the maintainance of the conflict and the creation of its results.
For example: Do companies compete with each other for profit or do the cooperate in providing the people with the requested goods? Do scientists compete for the dominance of their school of thought, or does the scientific community cooperate in the creation of scientific truth? I think the answer is, they do both.
The resulting problem then is much rather the more general question: What should the rules and motivators of a social system be, so that the game ends up producing the most beneficial results?
In the first situation, the incentive of the different players is mostly the overall endresult of their game, brought to the personal level through social sanctions and motivational propaganda. This however implies that the players agree on the overall nature of the goal. So, for example, a socialist state will end up limiting free speech in order to keep people motivated. A measurement that arguably will lead to a decrease of creativity and innovation.
In the second situation, the incentive of the different players is mostly the satisfaction of their own desires. This allows for overall goals and truths to deviate, as long as it's still generally agreed upon that a certain amount of competition in the system is required for personal happiness. On the other hand, it is now required to constitute a competitive society from the individual interests of the players. Most likely, the increase in adaptiveness (read innovation) of the system, is bought with a suboptimal organization of labour.
Now this is extremely speculative, but perhaps what we see today in the shared success of both the "western" world (includes Japan) and China, is that the different models of cooperation each do different things better than the other model. China is able to produce existing goods cheaper, while societies that allow more deviation in ideas and motivations are more effective in innovating new technologies.
Peter has penned his thoughts very beautifully, indeed.
According to me, collaboration works better.
Imagine a situation where your company has collected books and binders of creative ideas, with little to show for it. Your teams are struggling to get new initiatives launched successfully but lack resources to do it.
A successful partnership among complements helps companies get creative ideas off the ground; after all great ideas only matter if they are implemented. And to do that you need an environment that provides the freedom, inspiration and support to succeed. What better than an active and mutually-benefiting collaboration?
Whether you are looking to jumpstart a whole new business concept, or simply looking for an alternative to boring hotel conference rooms for your next off site meeting...
Your ideas CAN take flight. Not if you compete, but if you build bridges and join hands!
Armand Rousso
The answer to this is so obvious. Artists shouldn't compete against each other but should all live in one large community of creativity. Not only would it be unethical for a true artist to be creating not for self expression, but through collaboration we can share our ideas and together bring out the best in each other.
-Matt Martin, 14
As an ecologist I see the economy in ecological terms. There are many parallels I find fascinating. This is one...
For example, competition amoung life forms is high when the ecosystem or habitat is young and new. As relationships between and among species develop and refine, relationships and behavior are more mutualistic and symbiotic than competitive (yet, competition always exists, and will dominate if resources plummet or some other catastrophe).
I believe the ideal market environment should foster mutual benefits (I did not say altruistic) and symbiotic relationships. While competition is part of the pie and can be a useful tool, I think teamwork and collaboration will, in the day, will build better mouse traps.
-Chris E
Is it cheating to say "a mix of both" or, even better, "it depends?"
From an Organizational Behaviour way of looking at it, groups with high competition and conflict tend to perfom better on complex, high-creativity tasks because new ideas can come quicker, faster and social loafing is less likely to be a problem. On the downside, if conflict becomes negative, then it can lead to team breakdown or team members lacking confidence to share ideas.
On the other hand, collaborative teams with a similar set of norms are good at getting straightforward tasks done efficiently and effectively. The danger is the development of "groupthink", where ideas are not challenged and everyone just goes with the flow.
Good post and comments... great food for thought. Great idea for a blog!
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I think that compepition is more beneficial than collaboration.Competition gives u the motivation and inspiration to work more better and better.If there is no competition than man will find no solid reason to do better work.Man will work within a limit and and will not come out of it.The quality of his work will surely decrease.For example now when iam writing this blog iam trying my best to write it better because in a way my coment is also competing with other comments.
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