Collaborative Competition

Peter Deitz wrote a great piece on the notion of "Collaboration vs Competition" in business. He argues that "collaborative dynamics and processes can be far more effective at producing innovation than competition." His point rings true both in the business world and in the classroom, and Moneythink rests at the joint of the two. 

We recognize the benefit of collaboration and encourage our students to collaborate accordingly. We've seen great success in our students' group-driven work, and we fully support the practice of collaboration in both education and in business. 

But the reason our collaborative efforts in the classroom work is because these students, like employees or leaders of companies, are driven to outperform their peers in other groups. What group-work does most successfully is harness natural competition and make it productive. The reason the NBA is so exciting is because it's driven by teams that compete collaboratively within themselves and compete competitively among each other. 

The most important aspect of this idea is that a balance must be struck between competition and collaboration. They are not mutually exclusive forces, and if combined effectively, they produce maximum results. We try to achieve this in the classroom with our students.