Competition in Wardley MappingConflict, Collaboration, and Co-operation
Competing well is not only about beating rivals head-on. You also compete through the partners you choose and the rules you agree with the rest of your industry, and a Wardley Map helps you decide which approach fits each component. One way to group these choices is into three forms: conflict, collaboration, and co-operation.
Why Collaboration Counts as Competition
Working with others is still a competitive move. You collaborate or co-operate to change the landscape in your favour: to speed up a component's evolution, to share the cost of exploring something new, or to set rules that suit you. The Gameplay Patterns catalogue treats it the same way. It lists Co-operation as an accelerator, a play that speeds up evolution, and Alliances and Co-creation as ecosystem plays for driving the evolution of an activity, practice, or data set.
Conflict
What It Is
Direct rivalry: organisations pursue the same users, resources, or talent, and one gains at the other's expense. It is costly, can escalate, and can end in legal disputes.
Where It Applies
Conflict happens at every stage, but its form changes. In Custom-Built and Product, rivals compete on features and differentiation. Near Commodity, competition turns to price and volume, and scale decides who is left. Defending a component's differentiation makes little sense if it is about to become a commodity.
Related Plays
Differentiation, Raising barriers to entry, IPR, Talent raid, Sapping, and Last man standing.
Collaboration
What It Is
A few organisations, or an organisation and its users, work towards a shared goal, such as a joint venture, a shared platform, or a jointly developed component. Each expects to gain more than it could alone.
Where It Applies
Often where a component needs to evolve faster than one party can push it, or where exploring something new in Genesis or Custom-Built is too costly or risky to do alone. Pushing a component towards Commodity together can also undermine a rival that depends on it staying differentiated.
Related Plays
Alliances, Co-creation, and Open approaches.
Co-operation
What It Is
Many players across an industry agree common ground, such as standards, interfaces, or a shared response to regulation, then compete on top of it.
Where It Applies
Around components at or near Commodity (+utility). Once something is industrialised, a shared standard lets everyone build on it and compete higher up the value chain, as the doctrine principle "Use standards where appropriate" suggests. Co-operation can still be a weapon: driving a market to a standard can raise the cost of transition for others or remove their ability to differentiate.
Related Plays
Co-operation, Standards game, Lobbying / counterplay, and Defensive regulation.
Questions to Ask of Your Map
The three forms are a way of thinking, not fixed categories, and you can use all three at once with different players. These questions help you decide which fits each component.
Who Else Is Involved?
For each component that matters, note who else supplies it, depends on it, or competes for it.
How Evolved Is It?
Place it from Genesis to Commodity. The stage hints at the likely form of competition: rivalry on features in Product, co-operation on standards near Commodity.
Who Gains If It Moves?
Ask who benefits if the component evolves faster and who benefits if it slows. The answer suggests whether to look for allies or prepare for a fight.
Which Plays Fit?
Look up plays that match the form you choose in Gameplay Patterns, and watch for the same plays being used against you.
Related
Sources
- Adapted from Simon Wardley, Wardley Maps, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Material adapted from these sources is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.