Quotes about Competition

Let's face it: Most companies in most industries have a kind of tunnel vision. They chase the same opportunities that everyone else is chasing, they miss the same opportunities that everyone else is missing. It’s the companies that see a different game that win big. The most important question for innovators today is: What do you see that the competition doesn't see?

Answering that question requires vuja dé. And vuja dé requires a radical shift in perspective—which is why outsiders often see the future first. It’s also one of the big limitations of benchmarking. The most creative CEOs I’ve met don’t aspire to learn from the “best in class” in their industry—especially when the best in class aren’t all that great. They aspire to learn from companies far outside their field as a way to shake things up and make real change.

Don't let the "enemy" rule your life. Try your damnedest to follow the exact advice of Mr McCue...: "Literally don't think about them."

Easier said than done, no doubt, but awareness is a start. That is, direct conversations away from "What is Microsoft doing?" ("What is the accountancy across the road doing?") And focus instead on, What new and cool things are we doing for our customers?

The concept of free competition enforced by law is a grotesque contradiction in terms.

The thing that keeps a business ahead of the competition is excellence in execution.

There was a proposal in California that would keep out Wal-Mart but allow Costco. You opposed it. Are you nuts?

That's true: I always oppose these kinds of things. Competition makes us better. Some of our best stores have a Sam's Club next door.

Steve Jobs is perhaps the most competitive human being I have ever met in my life, and yet I would argue one of the most artistic human beings I have ever met in my life. You can trash the movies all you want, but they do have an artistic component. And yet brutal competition knows no peers when it comes to Hollywood.

The 10 or 12 artists I have known really well all my life are at least as competitive as professional athletes. They may express it in slightly different terms, but you look at the Jackson Pollocks et al., and they are as interested in wall space in the galleries as Joe Montana is in the percentage of completed passes. So the notion that symphonic conducting, or stage play, or pure art, is not a competitive business is real bullshit.

If there wasn't any competition, I'd be very worried, because it would mean we were not doing very well.

"When one woman strikes at the heart of another she seldom misses, and the wound is invariably fatal."
Madame de Merteuil

The purpose of education is not the accumulation of information in order to compete for success.  Education is the experience of being fully present to oneself and the world; it is transformation toward wholeness.

Competing against each other leaves little space for reciprocity and the growth of social capital. Running against another in a race may benefit our speed, but jointly organising the sports day produces cooperation and trust. There are many situations where cooperation and reciprocity are more effective than competition. Civic virtues come from building on what we have in common rather than by using our differences to create in-groups, outgroups and fear driven competition

The best athlete
wants his opponent at his best.
The best general
enters the mind of his enemy.
The best businessman
serves the communal good.
The best leader
follows the will of the people.

All of the embody
the virtue of non-competition.
Not that they don't love to compete,
but they do it in the spirit of play.
In this they are like children
and in harmony with the Tao.

All streams flow to the sea
because it is lower than they are.
Humility gives it its power.

If you want to govern the people,
you must place yourself below them.
If you want to lead the people,
you must learn how to follow them.

The Master is above the people,
and no one feels oppressed.
She goes ahead of the people,
and no one feels manipulated.
The whole world is grateful to her.
Because she competes with no one,
no one can compete with her.

When you are content to be simply yourself and don't compare or compete, everybody will respect you.

Competitive companies are like balls of mercury rolling around on the ground after you break an old glass thermometer; they look like solid metal balls, rolling around as if they would bounce off each other. But just get them close to each other and they will gravitate to each other and merge seamlessly.

Entrepreneurs and management often spend years huddled in their chilly isolated caves, creating market competition drawings on white marker boards hung on the damp rocky walls.

Reach out to the competition instead of fighting them.

The zero-sum game: that's the way it is if you're a competitive person and you see capitalism in that way. Zero-sum game implies winners and losers which I don't agree with. Somebody has to win and somebody has to lose, it all comes back to zero (minus eight, plus eight). But I don't agree with that because all boats can rise on a rising sea. Good films can help other films to be open. There's a different psychology at work. If you're overly competitive, you'll be exclusionary and say it's a zero-sum game (I must get eight and he must lose eight). Gekko simplifies it down to a painting. He says he bought this painting or this building for X and he sold it for Y and he made that profit and he assumes that somebody else got beat, but that's not necessarily true. You don't always lose.

One must marvel at the intellectual quality of a teacher who can't understand why children assault one another in the hallway, playground, and city street, when in the classroom the highest accolades are reserved for those who have beaten their peers. In many subtle and some not so subtle ways, teachers demonstrate that what children learn means much less than that they triumph over their classmates. Is this not assault? . . . Classroom defeat is only the pebble that creates widening ripples of hostility. It is self-perpetuating. It is reinforced by peer censure, parental disapproval, and loss of self-concept. If the classroom is a model, and if that classroom models competition, assault in the hallways should surprise no one.

You need to be aware of what others are doing, applaud their efforts, acknowledge their successes, and encourage them in their pursuits. When we all help one another, everybody wins.

Non-cooperative approaches, by contrast, almost always involve duplication of effort, since someone working independently must spend time and skills on problems that already have been encountered and overcome by someone else. A technical hitch, for example, is more likely to be solved quickly and imaginatively if scientists (including scientists from different countries) pool their talents rather than compete against one another.

There is competition, but it is used in a good way.  It is positive to want to go first, provided the intention is to pave the way for others, make their path more easy, help them, or show the way.  Competition is negative when we wish to defeat others, to bring them down in order to lift ourselves up.

Peaceful coexistence
"whenever we find rather similar animals living together in the wild, we do not hink of competition by tooth and claw, we ask ourselves, instead, how competition is avoided. When we find many animals apparently sharing a food supply, we do not talk of struggles for survival; we watch to see by what trick the animals manage to be peaceful in their coexistence.
Peaceful coexistence, not struggle, is the rule in our Darwinian world. A perfectly fashioned individual of a Darwinian species is programmed for a specialised life to be spent for the most part safe from competition with neighbours of other kinds. Natural selection is harsh only to the deviant aggressor who seeks to poach on the niche of another. The peaceful coexistence between species, which results from evolution by natural selection, has to be understood as an important fact in the workings of the great ecosystems around us. It is also, surely, one of the most eartening of the lessons of biology. "

If you truly don't have competition, then zoom out until you can define some. Competition can be as simple as the reliance on the status quo, Microsoft (since at some point Microsoft will compete with everyone for everything), or researchers in universities. Pick something, because saying you have no competition at all is a nonstarter.

You are to become a creator, not a competitor, you are going to get what you want, but in such a way that when you get it every other man will have more than he has now.

The best of conversations occur when there is no competition, no vanity, but a calm quiet interchange of sentiments.

A tulip doesn't strive to impress anyone. It doesn't struggle to be different than a rose. It doesn't have to. It is different. And there's room in the garden for every flower. You didn't have to struggle to make your face different than anyone else's on earth. It just is. You are unique because you were created that way. Look at little children in kindergarten. They're all different without trying to be. As long as they're unselfconsciously being themselves, they can't help but shine. It's only later, when children are taught to compete, to strive to be better than others, that their natural light becomes distorted.

Competition should not be for a share of the market-but to expand the market.

Ten Success Qualities Most Wanted by Business Leaders: 1. Ability to lead and communicate with others. 2. Ability to compete. 3. Ability to plan and schedule your activities. 4. Versatility in your dealings. 5. Loyalty to your business. 6. Responsibility for time, money, property and opportunities. 7. Honesty in all things. 8. Truthfulness. 9. High moral character. 10. Adaptability to mental and physical pressures with the ability to bounce back.

If you can't get enthusiastic about your work, it's time to get alarmed-something is wrong. Compete with yourself; set your teeth and dive into the job of breaking your own record. No one keeps up his or her enthusiasm automatically. Enthusiasm must be nourished with new actions, new aspirations, new efforts, new vision. It is your own fault if your enthusiasm is gone; you have failed to feed it. If you want to turn hours into minutes, renew your enthusiasm.

Competition doesn't create character, it exposes it.