“Nay, never lift up thy hands to me—there’s no clean hands in the trade.
But steal in measure,” said Harry our King. “There’s measure in all things made!”
Cambridge Evening News' run a wonderful Business team, which reprint this blog sometimes. It is a bit strange to give you a weblink to someone else's News page, isn't it? Doesn't Cambridge Evening News compete with Cambridge Network's own news pages? And I went to dinner at the annual Business Awards with the Greater Cambridge Partnership team. Curiouser and curiouser. Should I really be dining with other people who lobby for local infrastructure and who are doing a brilliant job of it? Well, my excuse is that they were kind enough to invite me and they are our members, after all. As are Cambridge Evening News. Hmm. Why would they both be members of a potentially competing organization like ours?
Barry Nalebuff and Adam Brandenburger have given us all a better appreciation of Games Theory and why cooperative behaviours can emerge even in highly competitive situations. Its not just goodwill - you need the capacity to retaliate and signal correctly. King's College Chapel is a wonderful example of coopetition. The stone carvings, the portcullis, and the rose, symbolize Henry VII's Knowledge Economy of administering clerics, honouring his mother and his wife respectively (Happy Mothers Day!!!). They remain the symbols of our Parliament and our country to this day, testimony to his sure craft in statesmanship as he ended the anarchy of the War of the Roses. But the unknown master builders who made that vision reality had no easy blueprint to guide their teams over a 98 year period of dangerous construction (1446-1544). The result is a miracle of light. A high ceiling floating above greenhouse clear windows, the load effortlessly carried by rough stone buttresses. The craft they drew on was hard acquired at cathedrals like Coventry and Norwich and our sister city of Caen.
So where is the coopetition tit-for-tat in this story, I hear you ask? Our dynasty founder and his master builders sound like plain-vanilla cooperation. Well, why can we still see and hear the cradle of that dynasty's Civil Service? Perhaps, like Caen and St Pauls, the chapel would have survived when WWII bombers burned their home cities. Perhaps it would have fallen like the Frauenkirche in Dresden and so many other cultural treasures. So why was Cambridge given such light treatment in the Baedeker blitz we were promised after the Lubeck raid? Cynics may say that the city is less economically important than Norwich, Canterbury, Exeter, Bath and York, or many of the other UK cities in Baedeker - but the last 3 are a lot further from airbases on the Continent. Optimists may point to Albert, the golden Chancellor who brought systematic scientific study and PhDs to the University, and presume some lingering empathy from countryment following more iron ideals. But concerned parents evacuating London at the time noted that our other sister city of Heidelberg was also spared consistently throughout the war, like Gottingen a hostage to the safety of our own oldest University cities. Maybe that signal got through the fog of war. Despite the bitter words, despite the total war, the fabric of these beautiful cities was left our legacy for Europe at peace. Coopetition probably saved Cambridge and Heidelberg.
Coopetition explains why we make market places where buyers know they can find quality controlled goods, why bitterly competing craftsmen concentrate in areas where their apprentices can find their next position and move on, and why companies share services. In Cambridge both Cambridge Network and The Learning Collaboration bring together companies and service providers who compete day to day, but know that they need to be visible to draw the most precious resource, human talent, and develop it to its fullest potential. We cheerfully collaborate with everyone we can to produce shared visions like the Technopole Report and host our international visitors at biannual events like the Corporate Gateway. I grew up in Cambridge, and used to run up to the Beechwoods on Gog Magog Down that overlook the city. In those woods there is a crater, which my mother told me was made by a bomb dropped from a German plane returning from a raid in the Midlands. It always impressed me that the pilot had ditched that bomb outside of our home town, in a time when so many were burning and dying. I am tremendously glad that Europe at peace can draw on far more goodwill than our parents and grandparents could rely on!
Our original founders are good at making markets. Broers, Cleevely and Hauser all have a track record in that area and wonderful new ventures to push forward. When their names and ours are as forgotten as those unknown architects of King's College Cambridge, I hope that Cambridge will still be a shared space where people can gather in hope.
Comments