Professor Yuval Noah Harari propounds that we, the Homo Sapiens, have dominated this world because of our capability to cooperate in large numbers running into millions and billions. While this is undeniably true, it makes one wonder whether it is this cooperation alone that has brought us all that we have today, or is there more to it. When we look around us, we cannot miss noticing that but for competition, our achievements will be nowhere close to what these are today. This is the reason that capitalist societies have laws against monopoly and restrictive practices. This is also the reason that in communist or socialist societies you have products of poor quality, scarcities, and lack of innovation too.
Viewed from another angle, it is often noted that most of our breakthrough innovations have taken place during wartime. The reason is obvious. The competition is at its height during wartime. Also so is the cooperation, because nothing unites people like war.
It is this fabric woven from the warp and woof of cooperation and competition that has given rise to the portmanteau "coopetition."
Interestingly the very same stories, namely religion, organisations, fiat money etc, that provide the basis for coperation are also the cause of competition, at times destructive like wars, at times productive leading to better ideas and products. Globalisation also has a bearing on coopetition. Globalisation has amplified the scope of human cooperation by bringing together societies that were insulated form each other. At the same time it has brought about conflict between competing stories from different regions of the world.
Why did diverse societies need similar stories in the first place? I would like to think that the multifarious needs of human beings are difficult to satisfy by an individual himself and even by a small group or tribe. Hence the need for organizations, money etc and underlying stories. Each society had a container organization for which the basis was provided by religion and the concomitant culture. Within this container came up organizations specialising in meeting a specific need of the individual members of the society. Again for each need there will be multiple organizations competing with each other leading to continued improvement.
I will be very happy if Prof Harari or some other scholar could throw more light on this fascinating tapestry of coopetition.
