Co-opetition

The concept of ‘co-opetition’ was first coined by Ray Noorda, founder of Novell, and popularized in the strategic management field by Adam M. Brandenburger and Barry J. Nalebuff in their book Co-opetition (Brandenburg and Nalebuff 1996), where they used the concept to extend the use of game theory in strategic management and to provide an analysis tool called the ‘value net’ that incorporated customers, complementors, competitors and suppliers into an analysis of cooperative and competitive dynamics. In strategy research, the concept has become part of the standard vocabulary and a label for situations where firms simultaneously cooperate with and compete against each other. To date, the occurrence and implications of co-opetition have been studied in multiple industries including the steel industry (Gnyawali et al. 2006), breweries (Bengtsson and Kock 2000...