Co-opetition : exploring the degree of cooperation and competition of Singapore firms in the marketplace.

This project is exploratory in nature and it is meant to provide a starting point for future research on the phenomenon of “Co-opetition’ in local firms. Its values to local firms in staying relevant in Singapore’s knowledge-based and network-based economy were our motivations for this research. The main goal of this research is to find out the varying degree of cooperation and competition of Singapore firms in the marketplace. We did this by an extensive literature review and surveying Singapore firms. As the study of co-opetition is still relatively new we decided to build a theoretical framework incorporating the works from various authors, laying the foundations on which our questionnaire is based. Our sampling frame consists of 5321 firms, using online surveys from which we managed to obtain 71 valid responses. The most important finding was while cooperation and competition seemed to be at lower levels in the past, both will rise to higher levels in the future. This research has shown that the future mentality of Singapore firms seem to be one that embraces ‘Co-opetition’. Furthermore, they may share the view that competition and cooperation are positively related and must go in tandem