IT may be one of the few industries where competing companies can work together to become more than the sum of their parts. We work with several local and national companies in order to spread our coverage and widen the skill set available to our customers. We participate in several industry groups where we share ideas with our 'competition' rather than hiding behind our own IP and shooing away anyone who dare ask about how we do things. The power of sharing and working together certainly does seem stronger than the need to compete sometimes. We find that we rarely end up competing for a prospect with the guys we site beside in these groups, which means there are customers our there for all of us. We just need to make sure we find the ones that are the best fit for our specific areas of expertise.
I enjoy reading Arlin Sorensen's blog Peer Power. He recently wrote about the Lessons from Peers (part 1 and part 2). Have a read!
