Coopetition Interactive is © 1996 by the Authors.
No game is an island. Even so, people draw boundaries and divide the world
up into many separate games. It's easy to fall into the trap of analyzing
these separate games in isolation--imagining that there's no larger game.
The problem is that mental boundaries aren't real boundaries--there are
no real boundaries. Every game is linked to other games: a game in one place
affects games elsewhere, and a game today influences games tomorrow. Even
the mere anticipation of tomorrow's game influences today's.
Understanding, playing off, and changing the links between games is our
fifth, and final, lever of strategy. The first step is to recognize the
links between games. The links are there. Even if you don't see them, you
can still trip over them, as we saw back in the Game Theory chapter when
we looked at the story of Epson's entry into the laser printer market. Once
you've seen the links, you can use them to your benefit. The links aren't
ironclad: you can create new links between games or sever existing ones.
And by doing so, you can change the scope of the game.