Co-Opetition and Knowledge Transfer

Recent business trends have given rise to co-opetition: simultaneous co-operation and competition between firms. Co-opetition entails the sharing of knowledge which may be a key source of competitive advantage. Under co-opetition there is a paradox that the knowledge shared for cooperation may also be used for competition. While the existence of this problem is known, there is little investigation of how it may be modeled and, thus, managed. This paper begins by discussing the problem situation and its underlying theory. It then introduces a game-theoretic framework for analyzing inter-organizational knowledge sharfng in the context of co-opetition. This allows the value of knowledge shared to be investigated and reveals that a crucial aspect will be the firm's ability to manage the process. Thus, based on the framework, the paper explores management guidefines predicated on co-ordination and control theory for the most challenging of four contingencies identified. The paper concludes with an agenda for future theoretical and empirical research.