Is Cooperation with Competitors a Good Idea? An Example in Practice Tzu-Ju Ann Peng, Stephen Pike, 1 Johnson Chung-Hsin Yang 2 and Göran Roos 1 Department of Business Administration, National Cheng-Chi University, 64, Sec. 2, Zhinan Rd., Taipei 11605, Taiwan, 1 Intellectual Capital Services Ltd, 1 Hammersmith Grove, London W6 0NB, UK, and 2 Sinon Co., 35 Chung-Shan Rd. Ta-Tu Hsiang, Taichung Hsien 432, Taiwan Corresponding author email: t.a.peng@nccu.edu.tw; ann.peng@cranfield.ac.uk Coopetition has become a heated issue in the last decade. In this study, a scrutinized review of previous research on coopetition is presented to clarify the research stream on coopetition, from which the implications are derived and a framework to analyse the phenomenon is proposed. Given the complex nature of coopetition, an in-depth case study was undertaken to investigate the competition–cooperation relationship and coo- petition performance over a 15-year period in a Taiwanese supermarket network, which was formed by a focal company and its competitors. Performance was analysed before and after launching the coopetition strategy, in which 31 indicators were examined. The findings imply that competition (Yang) and cooperation (Yin) are reciprocally rooted in and mutually promoted by each other. The findings also confirmed that cooperation with competitors did lead to better performance, at least over a period, in two ways. The first was that the adoption of coopetition permitted the attainment of performance levels beyond what would otherwise have been possible; the second was that the adoption of coopetition changed the timeframe, permitting earlier achievement of higher perform- ance levels. This study contributes to and extends knowledge of the dynamics and consequences of cooperation with competitors and demonstrates that coopetition has a significant temporary advantage. Introduction Coopetition is a strategy for ‘cooperation and competition’ and for ‘cooperation with competi- tors’. The term ‘coopetition’ was coined by Ray Noorda in the 1990s, and the concept of coope- tition has been highlighted since the term was brought to mainstream business by Adam Brandenburger and Barry J. Nalebuff in their book Co-opetition in 1996. Most scholars consider coopetition the phenomenon of simultaneous competition and cooperation (e.g. Brandenburger and Nalebuff, 1996; Chen, 2008; Gimeno, 2004; Kim and Parkhe, 2009; Lado, Boyd and Hanlon, 1997; Luo, 2007; Madhavan, Gnyawali and He, 2004; Peng and Bourne, 2009), under which two counter-actors could be either cooperators or competitors. In contrast, coopetition denotes cooperation with competitors (e.g. Bengtsson and Kock, 2000; Gnyawali and Park, 2009; Luo, Rindfleisch and Tse, 2007; Ritala and Hurmelinna-Laukkanen, 2009), which highlights an aggressive strategy of ‘sleeping with the enemy’ (Quint, 1997). In this study, we regard coopetition as cooperation with competitors in which they compete in the same market and cooperate in other areas. The phenomenon of cooperation We are very grateful for the valuable comments from the editor and two anonymous reviewers. We acknowledge the detailed proof-reading from Dr Catharina Lemmer. This research is financially supported by the National Science Council in Taiwan (NSC-99-2410-H-004-016- MY2). We thank the NSC for the funding support. British Journal of Management, Vol. ••, ••–•• DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8551.2011.00781.x © 2011 The Author(s) British Journal of Management © 2011 British Academy of Management. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA, 02148, USA.