“I’ve got the brains, you’ve got the looks, let’s make lots of money”
Is collaboration better than competition? I think it probably is when taken as a fundamental business operating system i.e. when brands that share a common belief get together to explore new opportunities together.
What we mean by collaboration as an operating model is a root and branch rethink of the way business actually works – away from a market share driven approach to something based around share of wallet.
Old school thinking:
Define a competitive position and defend it
Grow by increasing market share i.e. selling what you do to more people
Keep resources such as smarts, technology, talent to yourself (see them as a source of competitive advantage)
New school:
Define the role you play in people’s lives and seek out others who share that role
Grow by increasing share of wallet i.e. extend what you do in order to meet the needs of your constituents
Share resources with other like minded organisations who share the same belief system – who share your aims
Adidas + 2012 not Ebay + Skype Bono + RED not Will.I.am + Intel Tata Docomo not Nokia Microsoft
Maybe it’s a new way to think about collaboration – a match based on belief rather than capability. A union based on love rather than convenience?
Last week one of the UK’s brightest stars got snuffed out. Modec was a maker of funky electric commercial vehicles – near silent delivery trucks that the likes of Tesco, UPS and FedEx had started using. (You really have to look both ways before crossing the roads nowadays).
Electric Vehicle technology may not provide all the answers to sustainable mobility – but few will deny that it’s a pretty important area. But the most interesting and forward thinking players are small, starved of capital and seemingly perpetually teetering on the brink. ThinkEV, Tesla, BetterPlace, REVA – all really exciting companies, all well respected, none of them more than niche. Meanwhile the mass manufacturers like Renault see Electric Vehicles as a source of future differentiation and therefore something to be protected and defended at all costs. Getting all paranoid about putative Chinese spies under the bed.
Why get so competitive about it? Why not collaborate? The world needs sustainable mobility, and the means to achieving it stretch way beyond the resources of one company. Think how much more the auto industry could achieve – together – if all the players dropped their ‘default competition’ mode and started thinking in ‘default collaboration’ mode. The most forward thinking brands in the world are those that understand clearly the role that they play, rather than obsess about the ‘position’ they are defending.They seek out partners who share their aims and they work with them to achieve their common aims. Think Boots and Macmillan; M&S and Oxfam; Kate Moss & Topshop; Nokia and Microsoft; Tata and Docomo; iphone and google maps; and even Heston Blumenthal and Little Chef. This is the end of competition as a business model.
Getting electric vehicles into the mass day-to-day market requires a massive sharing of resources (smarts, technology and money) if it’s going to happen at anything more than a snail’s pace. And we need it - fast. Fuel prices are heading skywards. But without a fundamental change of thinking in the boardrooms of the automotive oligopoly it won’t happen fast enough.
I hope Modec is an exceptional case. I fear it isn’t.
