How corporate competition can spur collaborative solutions to the world's problems

Why can’t large competitive companies come together to work on or solve environmental challenges, AI regulation, polarization or other huge problems the world is facing? They can, says the University of Delaware’s Wendy Smith. While it's difficult, the key is to have these companies collaborate under the guise of competition.

Smith, a professor of management and an expert on these types of paradoxes, co-authored a recent three-year study of one of the most profound collaborations. Her team looked at the unlikely alliance of 13 competitive oil and gas companies that eventually formed Canada’s Oil Sands Innovation Alliance (COSIA), which works with experts worldwide to find innovative solutions for environmental and technical challenges in the region. Smith and her co-authors found that those companies were willing to collaborate, but only when collaboration was cast in the language, practices and goals of competition.

Given the scope of our global problems, companies must continually work together to offer solutions. Creating that collaboration becomes critical, Smith said. This research offers important insight about how these collaborations are possible.

Among the study's key findings:

Competition can drive cooperation — if leaders harness it.

It would make sense to assume that competition undermines collaboration. But the study finds that those who championed alliances used competitive dynamics to strengthen cooperation among rival firms. Rather than suppressing rivalry, leaders leveraged competition as a mechanism to enable joint action toward shared environmental goals. This reframes how organizations can manage tensions between competition and cooperation in partnerships. For example, COSIA leaders created competition between partners to see who would contribute the most valuable environmental innovations. Partners could only gain as much benefit from other company’s innovations commensurate with what they shared.

A “Paradox Mindset” is key to complex collaborative success.

The research identifies the importance of what the authors call a paradox mindset, which sees competition and cooperation not as opposites to be balanced but as interrelated forces that can be used in tandem. Leaders in the study who adopted this mindset were more thoughtful and creative about how to engage both competitive and collaborative practices in the same alliance.

Traditional balance isn’t the goal — process over stability.

Instead of pursuing a simplistic “balance” between competing and cooperating, the study shows that effective alliances evolve through process, where competition remains visible and even useful throughout the lifecycle of the alliance.

To connect with Smith directly and arrange an interview, visit her profile and click on the "contact" button. Interested journalists can also send an email to MediaRelations@udel.edu.