Colleagues and Competitors

Last month, Sigasi co-founder Hendrik Eechkaut and I visited the Design Automation Conference (DAC) in Anaheim, California.

We decided not to get a booth at the exhibit, but wear polo shirts with our twitter names and the company name instead. This saved us a lot of money, but it also allowed us to move around freely and meet with many interesting people. (perhaps I should talk about some of those people in another post)

The most interesting experience perhaps, was meeting with two people that have a product that is very similar to our own product. The easy way to label these people is as competitors. However, that label is not entirely correct. If you compete, that means there is one resource (in this case, customers or market share) that will be won by one competitor. The other competitors lose. The term competition is also (and more correctly) used with regards to sports and games.

In my native language, we use the word concurrent instead. This word comes from Latin and means to run together. This suggests that both concurrents (forgive my English neologism) are facing the same direction and headed towards a common goal. In fact this is true for me and Cristian and Andy. All of us would much rather grow the market than win market share from each other.

Sadly, the connotation of the word in the Dutch language has become the same as it has in English: that of two competitors facing each other in combat. People have wanted to use a term that has some of the original meaning of having common goals. They use the word "concullega", a portmanteau of concurrent and colleague. As it happens, even this word is used pejoratively. I'm sure we will need to find a new word soon to preserve the original meaning.

Nice philosophical and philological aside, there is always a feeling of adversity when you are fishing in the same pond. I'm sure that one concullega will sooner or later do things that bother the other. Some customers will move from one provider to the other. There is certainly information that cannot be shared with competing software providers.

Still, I'm happy to have met with Andy and with Cristian. In the spirit of Sigasi, which lets information freely flow on its website, I have been open with them. I hope to continue growing mutual trust in the coming years. We can collaborate on certain projects and compete on others.