Plane Conversations

Alfie Kohn, author of  No Contest:The Case Against Competition writes:

Noncooperative approaches . . . almost always involve duplication of effort, since someone working independently must spend time and skills on problems that already have been encountered and overcome by someone else.

Sound familiar?  Look around and in almost every industry you see competitors beating each other into the ground while reducing the end value to the customer and increasing cost.

Julie Browser, of IBM writes “The traditional concept of business as a “winner takes all” contest is giving way to a realization that in the networked economy, companies must both co-operate and compete. Termed “co-opetition,” this new perspective requires companies to create business strategies that capitalize on relationships in order to create maximum value in the marketplace.

“Co-opetition”– a model in which a network of stakeholders co-operate and compete to create maximum value — is one of the most important business perspectives of recent years. Internet and mobile technologies have made it even more necessary for companies to both co-operate and compete, by enabling relationships through information sharing as well as integrating and streamlining processes.

In today’s networked economy, co-opetition is a powerful means of identifying new market opportunities and developing business strategy.

Take the private aviation industry.  Everyday thousands of private jets fly empty. Those who charter jets pay the round trip cost of a jet whether they use it round trip or not.  The process creates what is known as “empty legs”. Empty legs are usually one way trips flying empty and yet already paid for by somebody.  Most Private operators try and sell the empty leg at full charter prices and thus few ever sell an empty leg.  Empty legs represent seats unused leaving revenue in the air.

What if these private jet operators shared all their empty legs with the public and sold seats on those legs?  By cooperating they would expand their markets, create value for consumers and generate more revenue.  But many won’t do that because they view themselves as competing with each other rather than cooperating.  In the meantime revenue is lost to the air. In this case they end up doing less alone rather than more together.

Business is both competition and co-operation

In the past, people saw business as a “winner takes all” or “zero-sum” game. The networked economy moves away from these purely competitive plays to recognize cooperative relationships that leverage value created by those in the network. Competition — the other aspect of co-opetition — occurs after businesses have created new value in the market and expand the value proposition through quality and creativity.

Social Flights business model is about creating cooperation with private jet operators with the aim of expanding the market and creating new value for all parties involved. For it to work the suppliers must cooperate in order to gain increased market share through new value offered to travelers who in turn create new revenue.

So, will you consider cooperating?

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I recently finished reading Falcon 7 – the new novel by best selling author James Huston. His last book, Marine One, made the NYT best seller list. I needed to try out my I-Pad book reader and Apple has this title in their bookstore so this was the book to try out the I-Pad reader.

James Huston takes aviation, international law, and the world of military special ops intrigue and weaves a story that will not let you put the book (I-Pad) down until you are finished.

The name for the book comes from the new long range business jet the Falcon 7X, manufactured by French company Dassault Falcon. The Falcon 7X is the culmination of state-of-the-art technology in business jet manufacturing and has a non-stop range of 5950 nautical miles at high cruise speeds. The aircraft incorporates fly-by-wire technology that has usually been reserved for airline class aircraft.

The Falcon 7X plays an important role in the book, a role revealed in the first few pages, and it continues to play a part in the plot as the story progresses.

For aviation lovers, the book includes great scenes involving helicopters, low level flying, FA-18 fighters and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.

James Huston is an attorney with a practice in international and aviation law. He was also a Top Gun Naval aviator and flew the F14. He has used his knowledge of aviation and law to tell the story that will keep you spellbound and will convince you that this could really happen..  

The book starts with an FA-18 over the skies of Afghanistan on what was to be a routine mission. While on their flight back to ship, the crew is diverted to a target across the border in Pakistan. After making what was assumed to be a bomb drop on a terrorist meeting site, things start to go wrong, the aircraft is shot down and the crew ejects.

I won’t go farther in the story and give it away. If you like aviation and you like to read Grisham novels you will love this book.

Buy it in the airline terminal or at the Apple Book Store on your I-Pad and it will get you through a long stay in the terminal or a cramped and boring international flight.

You will wish you were in the back of the Falcon 7X instead of the coach seat in the back of the Boeing; but, you will not want to go where the Falcon 7X takes the characters in this story.

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