BJ#15 Competitors

Does the Bible famous "Love your enemies" (Mat 5:44,Luke 6:27,35) apply to business? The answer seems to be a resounding yes. Grouping of competitors in a particular location seem to be a powerful drawing force e.g. Sim Lim Square, Funan Building for the IT people. We have associations of various professional and interest groups to speak as a force, to unify practices, to establish common interfaces etc. All these co-operative works of competitors together create productivity not only for themselves but also for the society as a whole. They key is to work together and yet create your niche of value-add to serve your customers.

Another main reason is that we really don't know who are our competitors in this fast changing world. Your staff may start a new company to compete with you. Your customers may decide to take thing in-house instead of buying from you. With so much merges going on, your competitors may become your associate. e.g. Peoplesoft and Oracle used to be competitors in application software business until Oracle bought them. Peoplesoft itself has earlier bought over his competitor JD Edwards.

What could stand the change of times and events is the unchanging principles of God. We are to love our enemies (competitors). But we are not to go to the other extreme of being cheated. Mt 10:16 tells us to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves. "The Arts of War" tells us that "war is the last and worse course of action".

Finally, we can differentiate the person and his acts. We are to love the person and to hate his evil acts. In summary, we need not be afraid of our competitors. We can work with them on certain areas, compete with them on others areas and we are to create our new blue ocean of market place. At all times, we keep our integrity with biblical based business practices.

May God bless your business as your try to run your business based on His Words.

(this series of articles on Business by Jesus is just the beginning of a compiling of Biblical Principles for Business. It is a framework where future contents can be easily added and shared. There are much to be discovered from the Bible for business.)

---updated 18 Jan 2008----
I was re-reading Edwards Deming' The New Economics 2nd ed. On page 56, it says that a system includes competitors. Competitors can work together to expand the pie of the market rather than just fight over market share. Competitors can focus together on how to improve the value, products or services to the customers such as lower costs or environmental protection. The automobiles industry could focus on producing a safer, more fuel efficient and 'greener' cars. Toyota is talking about sustainable mobility and sharing its technology in hybrid cars with others. It is a good example.


See also Bible for Business Seminar#14 Competitors & Summary

- - - o o o - - -

BJ#0 Business According to Jesus TOC --|--