Generating win-win strategies for software businesses under coopetition: A strategic modeling approach

Abstract

Interorganizational coopetition describes a phenomenon in which businesses cooperate and compete simultaneously. Such behavior is commonplace among software firms wherein vendors concomitantly deal with each other both as partners and as rivals. Sustainable coopetitive relationships are predicated on the logic of win-win strategies. Conversely, win-lose or lose-lose strategies do not lead to durable coopetitive relationships. This aspect of coopetition requires decision-makers in coopeting software businesses to generate and analyze win-win strategies. This paper proposes a strategic modeling approach to systematically search for alternatives and generate win-win strategies. This approach synergistically combines i* goal-modeling to analyze the distributed intentional structures of actors and Game Tree decision-modeling to reason about the moves and countermoves of actors. An illustrative example of a published case study is presented to demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses of this methodology.