One of the 100 best behavioural economic books of all time recommended by Jeff Bezos, Tim Ferriss, Satya Nadella, Brian Tracy and Erik Brynjolfsson. The Olympics. Britains Got Talent. The Rich List. The Nobel Prize. Everywhere you look: competition - for fame, money, attention, status. We depend on competition and expect it to identify the best, make complicated decisions easy and, most of all, to motivate the lazy and inspire the dreamers. How has that worked out so far? Rising levels of fraud, cheating, stress, inequality and political stalemates abound. Siblings wont speak to each other theyre so rivalrous. Kids cant make friends because they dont want to cede their top class ranking to their fellow students. (Their parents dont want them to either.) The richest men in the world sulk when they fall a notch or two in the rich list. Doping proliferates among athletes. Auditors and fund managers go to jail for insider trading. Our dog-eat-dog culture has decimated companies, incapacitated collaborators and sown distrust. Winners take all while the desire to win consumes all, inciting panic and despair. Just as we have learned that individuals arent rational and markets arent efficient but went ahead operating as though they were, we now know that competition quite regularly doesnt work, the best do not always rise to the top and the so-called efficiency of competition throws off a very great deal of waste. It might be comforting to designate these perverse outcomes but as aberrations mount, they start to look more like a norm. It doesnt have to be that way. Around the world, individuals and organizations are finding creative, collaborative ways to work that dont pit people against each other but support them in their desire to work together. While the rest of the world remains mired in pitiless sniping, racing to the bottom, the future belongs to the people and companies who have learned that they are greater working together than against one another. Some call that soft but its harder than anything theyve done before. They are the real winners.
