We thrive in an industry that is very competitive. Everybody with a little internet experience fancies themselves a programmer, web developer or an advisor of sorts. Many developers think there isn’t enough work to go around so they undercut prices and are very secretive about their internal practices. For Cogwise we have chosen the opposite. I live very openly and tell many of our successes and our shortcomings. As CEO, I keep a personal blog (http://www.invisiwill.com) which I update regularly and I have a personal twitter account. I’ve always been very open about our struggles as a company and my individual struggle as a Human Being. I think many see that openness as a weakness but I believe in that openness is a strength. We have gotten to a point where we have so many skilled people in our organization that we don’t need nearly as much advice because our shortcomings are very few now. But every business has shortcomings or areas where they can improve and sometimes it takes that outside person with new experience to make light of inefficiencies or weaknesses in an organization. Through listening and paying close attention to smart people we have become very strong and wise as a business much more quickly than other businesses in our same relative position.
Let me get to the primary point where we have learned the most. We share close relationships with what many would consider our competition and in some cases we have partnered with our competition to offer services they could not to their clients or offer services that we could not to our clients. Each business has its own culture and set of internal standards and tools which they evolved to be more efficient. When we overlap other businesses and work with other businesses we have improved our own processes and improved the processes of the business we worked with. It’s much like a cultural exchange program in that way. Two business mingle procedures and ideas and come out of the relationship stronger and better armed to satisfy both of their client’s needs. Many businesses fear doing this as they think that they will somehow arm their competitors with some magic bullet they only have access to. This would mean there is a lack of potential business and I don’t believe that to be the case. By raising the bar of both companies you raise the bar of the industry and make work more available. More people will hear about these successes and they will invest in more websites, more software or more "Whatever your product or service may be".
I do feel there are certain industries in where this mingling can be dangerous as in the situation of a business that provides one specialized product that has some essentially secret components of some sort. I don’t think web development is such an industry. There is so much room for growth and so many that don’t have a website, aren’t using technology to its full capacity or aren’t marketing themselves in modern ways. The field is competitive but we find many developers barely know what they are doing. Most developers write code with disregard to the business objectives, the user experience and the long term maintenance of the code. Generally, developers look to make the most margin on the code they write. I’m not saying we don’t look to make margin or that we aren’t worried about losing out to competition but I’m more interested in the long tail strategy of building successful businesses with happy and ambitious people. That relates to my own business and the businesses of our clients that we help create and improve through the application of technology.
Don’t sneer at your competition and constantly aspire to do better than them. If you want to sneer at someone sneer at the person you were last week and work to do better than the company you owned of last week or last year. Work with your competition to create a better quality of industry and to create opportunities for each other that you wouldn’t have on your own. Find your competitor and give them a call and see what you can do for each other.