Co-opetition

One way to look at the open resources vs. open textbook dynamic is to compare this with the notion of co-opetition. Co-opetition is well understood in the business world where corporations collaborate in order to compete better. As you know -- this is the practice where where companies work together for selected parts of their business where they do not believe they have competitive advantage, and consequently agree to collaborate in areas where they can share common costs. Consider for example, the collaboration between Toyota and Peugeot Citroen who share design, component parts and a jointly owned manufacturing plant to produce competing city cars. While there are substantive differences between open resources and open textbooks -- there are also many areas of potential. For example capacity building with reference to intellectual property, training in using the tools of content production etc. Why duplicate effort between the two sides of the coin? Similarly -- a collection of open resources can potentially be collated into a chapter for an open text. There must be other examples. - Source: Wayne Mackintosh