Competition or Collaboration?

[Eastern Dresses]

For small business, what do you think creates more success stories? Competitions or collaborations?

Also, what would you bring to the table if you were to collaborate in any venture?

If you were to compete with other small businesses, what makes you stand out?

[SID_NY]

My answer to the first question is Collaboration.

Rest, i've no idea since im not there yet

[Xtron]

For small business, what do you think creates more success stories? Competitions or collaborations?

Also, what would you bring to the table if you were to collaborate in any venture?

If you were to compete with other small businesses, what makes you stand out?

I would say combining Collaboration and Competition to stand out ya're brand. Going by ya're example..I would invest in brand and more money toward marketing..
as well as opening more outlets around the key areas of the city..

[decentGuy]

I don’t think there is a choice between collaboration and competition because collaboration is temporary, but competition is permanent. Even while we are collaborating with our partners, we will still be in competition with others in the same line of business.

Collaboration is not something I would like to do in a small business, because I have not seen many successes in such arrangements. There are too many risks because after all the collaborators of today are going to be competitors tomorrow. From collaboration, they will learn my secret recipe (suppliers, customers, employees, expenses, etc.).

When I was growing up, there were a couple of burger shops in a market near my home. They were steps away from each other and used to sell the exact same items for the exact same price. Since I was friends with one of the shop owners, I got to hear many ideas being floated. One idea was to get all the shops to have a unified menu such that one of them will sell biryani, one will do Chinese, one will stick to burgers, so on and so forth. The shop owner I was friends with told me that he will continue to compete at minimal profit until the others get frustrated and shut down. The rest of them collaborated but those businesses didn’t survive for long and kept loosing customers. They had fights over quality of food, cleanliness, profit sharing and whatnot.