The company is no longer an independent entity. It is caught in a more global ecosystem, where rivalry, competition and competition make more sense in cooperation. Cohabiting rather than opposing each other, innovating together rather than alone, collaborating with other actors in one's own industrial sector seems paradoxical. But it is in this paradox, called coopetition, that a business strategy can benefit from numerous advantages, establish win-win relationships and, ultimately, create value.
Coopetition: a relational mode
Coopetition combines the terms of cooperation and competition when a company simultaneously mobilizes a collaborative dynamic and a dynamic of competition with one or more other companies.
The concept of coopetition was born with Ray Noorda, the founder of Novell, in the years 1980-1990. He used it to describe the cooperation between competing companies in computer standards. The subject has since been studied further, until defining coopetition as a “dyadic and paradoxical relationship emerging when two companies cooperate in some activities, and are at the same time competing on other activities” [1] .This conception of coopetition highlights the paradox between two objectives that seem irreconcilable, especially in a society based on an economic model that favors competition and the search for market shares..
Responding to the change in relationships between suppliers and professionals
In an open and competitive market such as that of market places, companies are facing challenges but also new opportunities to deal with turbulence and instabilities. Coopetition contributes to reducing turbulence and is a lever for development, but also for creating value. Even if in practice the brakes remain numerous. Among these obstacles, being part of a co-opetition strategy means overcoming the first phase of lack of strategic understanding: in fact, the strategy is no longer in relationships based on tension but in simultaneous relationships of cooperation and competition between the various actors.
If the final objective of a company is to satisfy its end customers, how can we not join forces to achieve this general objective common to each company? Brain plasticity, in other words mental flexibility, seems to be the culmination of an effective and promising coopetition strategy.
Marketplace and co-opetition: a necessary relationship
Like co-opetition, the market place model is not new. Long invested and embodied by Pure Players to horizontal platforms such as Amazon, Cdiscount or Le Bon Coin, this model has evolved considerably with the vertical platforms of retail chains. From the BtoC model to a BtoB model, the shift is taking place to respond effectively to professionals. And health professionals are not excluded from this digitization of offers. However, digital technology must offer an adequate response to the health ecosystem. This is what Medical Place is working to do by offering a new model in this particular and regulated medical business.
In 2020, the marketplace market was comparable to that of SCRMs in the years 2000-2010. At that time, businesses of all sizes were vastly under-equipped. Today, with a growing distribution and even in full explosion of market places, companies and independent health professionals will have to equip themselves - if they are not yet - with one or more market places for their purchases, in particular medical equipment.
The exponential rise of marketplaces
Marketplaces grew by an average of 27%, twice as fast as in 2019, according to the report published by the Federation of E-Commerce and Distance Selling (Fevad) in February 2021. The health crisis has catalyzed the activity of platforms in the same way as commercial sites. But these developments may have another origin: the collapse of single-vendor e-commerce. By way of comparison and over a period of 12 years, 10% of global e-commerce on marketplaces represented 10% in 2008 and 57% in 2020[2].One thing seems to be taken for granted: Businesses with a successful e-commerce business have one thing in common: they all operate a marketplace.Attracted by the convenience, added value and choice that marketplaces offer, professional buyers turn to them to buy what they need, when they want and wherever they are. Market places also appear as a response to new lifestyles, personal and professional.
For Medical Place, multiplying the number of suppliers of medical equipment, offering quality products, developing the product offer as well as the offer of services — ranging from financing to second-hand — requires cooperation between the various actors.
It is this joint work that will be able to support the digital transition and the needs of health professionals as well as medical equipment suppliers.
[1] Bengtsson & Kock, “Coopetition in BusinessNetworks—to Cooperate and Compete Simultaneously,” September 2000, Industrial Marketing Management 29 (5) :411-4262000, p. 412.
[2] Le Moniteur, The (r) evolution of market places: what are the effects in the building industry? , https://www.lemoniteur.fr/article/la-r-evolution-des-places-de-marche-quels-effets-dans-le-batiment.2176377
