Coopetition Interactive is © 1996 by the Authors.
Do you want to be a player? It's the obvious question to ask yourself when
you consider entering a game. But the answer is rarely obvious. It's easy
to misjudge what it would really be like to be in the game.
The reason is that anytime you enter a game, you change it. You don't have
any choice in the matter. It's a new game because you've joined the cast
of players. People often miss this effect. They fail to think through how
their coming into a game will change it. They think that what they see is
what they're going to get.
Not so. The game after you've entered it isn't the same as the one you first
saw. In physics, this effect is known as the Heisenberg principle--you can't
interact with a system without changing it. There's a Heisenberg principle
in business, too: it's the way you change a game by joining it. That's where
we begin this chapter.
To show how this works in practice, we'll examine three different stories
of becoming a player. Two of the newcomers fared poorly, one made a lot
of money. That was the one who understood how its entry would change the
game. We'll draw out the general lessons from these stories. With these
lessons in mind, you'll know how to ensure that the decision to become a
player is a profitable one.