Picture a venturesome startup 10 years ago disrupting a market and eventually dominating it. With the innovation we’ve seen over the decade, this same startup might now be tapped out and thrown on the scrap pile due to another company that came along with a slightly more advanced product. Some business owners today surveying this savage landscape might ask: Is there a way we can keep innovating without the demolition derby?

Steve Ciesinski, president of SRI International, says that we are in the age of digital Darwinism. “We partner up at SRI with many organizations and companies that realize that they may be the leader in their industry now, but the C-level suite people are fearful that that’s not going to last forever,”  he said.

Ciesinski told Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick), co-host of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, about the dilemma facing the global 2000 ilk of companies. “They’re all trying to figure out should we do an ‘acquihire’ of a young 20-to-30-person organization that is maybe composed of computer scientists from Stanford or other top notch schools? Or should we do a merger with maybe a heavy weight in that industry?” Ciesinski explained.

Give peers a chance

One alternative to the perpetual death match in Ciesinski’s view is ‘coopetition,’ which he explained thusly: “You’re a startup executive; I’m a startup executive; maybe in the same or similar industries, so you and I have coffee together, we’re sharing information together, we’re guarded, but we’re still sharing information. You walk away with benefits, I walk away with benefits, and both of us have minimal costs involved.”

Ciesinski said, optimistically, that he sees the coopetition phenomenon steadily spreading through Silicon Valley and beyond.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of the Future of Innovation: A Peek Inside Stanford GSB’s Crystal Ball event.

Photo by SiliconANGLE