Competition vs Collaboration

A few years ago, some of my futures colleagues challenged me when I used the term competitive. I was looking for a byline for some work that I was doing, some events, and I was obviously wanting to get more clients and maybe more corporate clients. And I know that for corporates, the bottom line is very often profit. So I refer to using futures thinking as a competitive advantage, and my colleagues called me out on it. And I actually really appreciated the fact that they did that. The value of futures thinking is not To make our position better to the detriment of others. It is not to satisfy the needs of a small group of the in-crowd to the exclusion of everyone on the outside. It is not supposed to be competitive. We really can create better futures for more people, for more stakeholders, for the entire planet. There really are options where we can do that. only if we're intentional, only if we want to collaborate. In fact, one of the terms I like to think about is kind of the difference between collaboration and co-creation. Collaboration is I've got something, you've got something, let's put our things together and make something better with us together. Co-creation is I have an intention and skills and stuff, and you've got an intention and skills and stuff. Let's come together and see what we can create together because of our partnership. So it's not just kind of putting together existing things, it's co-creating something new. And most times that co-creation is way better than any of us could have done on our own, very often better than any of us could even imagine or dream or have ambitions about on our own. When we come together and co-create, it's magical. So we want to have a look at a future that is co-created without excluding people without making it just for the in-crowd.