THE PRINCIPLE

Cooperating with competitors can create win–win situations

Valerie Young is the founder of Changing Course (www.changingcourse.com), where she sells a ‘Dream Accelerator Kit’ to help people find their true calling. When she decided to create a CD about how aspiring entrepreneurs could achieve their dreams, instead of trying to beat the competition, she courted two highly successful competitors, Barbara Sher (author of I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was) and Barbara Winter (author of Making a Living without a Job). They accepted her proposal that the three of them work together to produce and share the profits of a CD programme called Making Dreams Happen.

In a letter to Entrepreneur magazine, Young notes that women seem to be more open to this kind of cooperation, referring to the belief among many women that ‘there is something wrong with a definition of success that says, “in order for me to win, someone else has to lose”’.

Who are your competitors? How could you cooperate in a venture that would be advantageous for all of you?