Coopetition Strategy: A New View of Inter-firm Dynamics for Value Creation

While recent research has emphasized the increasing importance of coopetition in interfirm dynamics, extant studies have not gone much further beyond naming, claiming or evoking the relevance of coopetition to understand interfirm interdependences. The purpose of this paper is to provide an analytical content to the concept of coopetition. By suggesting that coopetition is a matter of "incomplete interest congruence across interdependent firms", we claim that coopetition does not simply emerge from coupling competition and cooperation issues, but rather it implies that cooperation and competition merge together to form a new kind of strategic interdependence between firms, giving rise to a coopetitive system of value creation.