Written by: Kevin Ordonoez

Managing Director, .orgCommunity

When I was a consultant in DC and taking graduate courses, I wrote a paper that supported the notion that all programmers should use one common programming language. Most of my arguments were obvious; world-wide knowledge and experience, common support for a programming platform across industries, users and countries, the theory of enhancing and extending the programming language capabilities for the future and to have predictability on total costs of ownership for the businesses.  The key take-away from this course taught us the values of a free economy and competition.

When I started my first company, we thrived on competition.  We learned from competitor and approved upon what we learned.  We talked networked with competitors’ customers and converted them to becoming ours.  Through positive competition and networking we were even able to merge with one of our biggest competitors.

This past week while working with one of our association customers, we had a conversation around one of their competitors. The organization felt there was a big threat. This feeling of fear reminded me that competition is good and should be embraced.

Competition help in what ways you ask?

1)      It forces you to think outside the box, evaluate your value proposition and fine tune your “secret sauce.” 

2)      Don’t have a knee jerk reaction by creating programs or services that don’t support your value proposition.

3)      Competition fuels creativity and innovation.

4)      Understand your competition and learn from them. Ask why what they are doing is successful and identify new and better ways of competing.

If you stay positive, you can leverage what you might think is competition.