Cooperative or Competitive Business Models?

I think competition is a myth...I remember one person stated that "competition is a limiting belief system that others gain, while you lose." When you act from a competitive mode, you think there are winners and losers. You fall under the limited assumption that the supply is limited, and acting out of desperation. You are constantly trying to outdo or out-compete, regardless of whether the product is valuable to humanity as a whole. Worst case, you may even exploit, cheat, or steal just to gain an edge.

But if you consider a Cooperative model, you understand that it's about working benefit the whole.

I'm all for healthy competition, such that we compete to build, not compete to destroy.

"Productivity in principle is higher when people are working with each other rather than against each other."

Many of the great ideas and technology were not started in a free market I think. Basic science research are funded by the government first....the Internet, GUI for a computer, the mouse, and innovations from universities. All based on a cooperative mindset to help society without any commercial intent yet.

The free business market and businesses just found ways to monetize them.

P.S That second choice should be "competition." =)

Oh shoot! Missed that. Could a mod edit that for me? I don't seem to have the option.

One of my favorite all time quotes is by the buddha and goes something like "There is only ONE truth - and that is everything is true and nothing is true". Neither competitions nor collaboration are ultimately real, they both are "operating systems" of particular levels of consciousness and are best functional for certain stages of social evolutions. A brief study of i.e. spiral dynamics allows one to understand how and why competition has been the default way of operating in the last centuries or millenia, why this was functional for the time being and has become obsolete and dysfunctional in the past few decades and why collaboration is the emerging paradigm or operating system and the only one functional for the global challenges/ opportunities at hand. Accordingly, it has been much easier in the past to "get what you want" in a competitive approach and in many situations that may still be the case - yet anyone who starts building a business based on competition these days better understand they chose to become a dinosaur just before their extinction and they're at best serving their short term self-interest and damaging their own and everyones future...