Let your competition work for you!

Expansion, greenfield investments and growth are a huge topic in many sectors that have started to grow again. Companies always strive to conquer new markets, but on their way to economic victory they now encounter a serious problem: lack of specialized staff. When working in the production industry, no matter what you produce, you need specialized staff – people who have studied law, history or literature will not keep your business going. Unfortunately, less and less young people choose to study engineering, production, chemistry and even less choose to become process specialists.

So, you want to build something, but you do not have the people to operate it. You would like to train them, but it is quite hard to train on greenfield. What can you do? Simple – send them to your competition for an on-site training, while you focus on building your plant. Sounds impossible? It isn’t. You pay your competitors to train them, it is not like they would do you a favor! Of course you should not rush to your fiercest competitor – you will most probably get the door slammed right into your face. Just think and make a list of competitors with whom you have a good relation, or even cooperation agreements when it comes to complementary products. Think of companies that could profit from you being there – a larger market also attracts customers and can create win-win situation for everyone involved.

Sometimes a far-fetched idea is not necessarily impossible to implement. And even in the services industry, the concept can be implemented. Competition is not necessarily bad and cooperating with competitors should be seriously taken into consideration, when trying to grow a new market.