From The Washington Post
In a cutthroat world, some Web giants thrive by cooperating
By Greg Ferenstein
In a hard-knuckled, free-market economy built on competition, the most successful Internet companies put a high stake in another value: cooperation.
They haven't lost a step in Wall Street's cutthroat business culture. And in fact, they may well be transforming ideas of work in America....
The allure of cooperative economics is that it might not just be good for individual businesses but also build industries and even economic communities. Friendly competition is the explanation often given for the unique success of Silicon Valley, the birthplace of Google, Twitter and Facebook.
But it's rooted in something much less friendly: lawsuits. During the '90s tech boom, California courts refused to uphold noncompete agreements commonly used on the East Coast to keep former employees from working for competitors. Such rulings produced a lucrative revolving door of local talent. Combined with the start-up culture of constantly opening and closing new ventures, Silicon Valley developed a tight-knit sense of community, according to AnnaLee Saxenian, dean of the School of Information at the University of California at Berkeley....
Microsoft's Internet Explorer has long dominated the browser market. Google, with aggressive advertising of its Web browser, Chrome, has steadily eaten away roughly 10 points of Explorer's 56 percent market share since its launch three years ago, according to the analytics firm Net Applications.
And yet, Google Chrome is free.
"Remember," said Hal Varian, Google's chief economist [and professor in the School of Information, on leave], "Chrome is open-source. So any other browser that wants to incorporate pieces of Chrome into their system, they're welcome to do it."...
Governments around the world, eager to enjoy the fruits of innovation, have consulted former Silicon Valley chief executive and Harvard fellow [and I School visiting scholar] Vivek Wadhwa on how to foster their own tech enclaves. The key, he says, is "the people."
"The difference in thinking between Silicon Valley and others places is that you compete one moment and you cooperate the next moment," Wadhwa says....