Title: The Dynamics of Co-opetition: Strategic Interplay in Business,Management,and International Affairs

Report time: April 27th, 2025 (Sunday) 16:30-17:30

Report location: Room 408, DISEI

Inviter: Charlom Schirman

Abstract: 

The concept of co-opetition, a portmanteau of cooperation and competition, was popularized by Adam M.Brandenburger and Barry J. Nalebuff in their 1996 book Co-opetition. Rooted in game theory, co-opetition challenges the classical dichotomy that frames actors as either collaborators or competitors. Instead, it offers a more nuanced understanding of strategic behavior where organizations simultaneously cooperate and compete to create and capture value. While initially developed to describe business dynamics, the concept has since found resonance in broader fields such as management theory and international relations,. My presentation will explore the foundations of co-opetition, its practical applications in corporate strategy and organizational management, and its increasingly evident role in shaping international affairs.

The concept is also useful in other human fields of action, like Technology and innovation ecosystems; Higher education and Research; Healthcare, public policy, etc.

Biography:

A Free University of Brussels and Harvard Graduate in Economics, International Relations and Middle Eastern Studies, 1969. He obtained an MBA degree at the ENPC (Paris) in 1992.

Former lsraeli diplomat (1974-1991), he has been the Acting Director of the Economic Intelligence division in the Center of  Research and Policy of lsrael's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Chief of the Economic section at the Embassy of lsrael in Paris and lsrael's Consul General in Montreal. He then created Capitêtes International, a consulting firm based in Paris, to train and support corporate and institutional clients in international negotiations and industrial collaboration.

From 1997 to 2010, he was Associate Professor in the world network of the ENPc-MBA (Paris, Buenos Aires,Mendoza, Edinburgh, Casablanca, Tokyo, New Delhi and shanghai) teaching international Business Negotiation and Geopolitics for Business. In 2000 he co-created SlMBA (shanghai lnternational MBA), one of the first international MBA programmes in China, as a JV betweer ENPC and Tongji University. He has been the International Dean of SlMBA until 2011. From 2012 to 2015 he lived in Shanghai and was Director of the International Executive Development Program (lEDP) of Tongji University's School of Economics and Mangement. He is a visiting lecturer cr in several Business Schools in China (Tongji; ECNU; Hunan University) and very active in academic cooperation between lsrael and China.

In 2015 he was appointed Head o f the International MBA at Haifa. In 2018 he created the Technology Management MBA in Haifa where ECNU engineer students study along lsraeli start-up managers.