Rivals must build together

Bangladeshi entrepreneurs collaborate brilliantly at weddings, trade-body elections and occasionally when a tax proposal threatens everyone. Ask them to share technology, research or infrastructure, however, and the room suddenly develops a trust deficit larger than the national budget.

The instinct that we are poor collaborators is understandable, but it is less a national-character verdict than an institutional one. Many large companies remain family-controlled and protective of information. Contracts can be slow to enforce, intellectual property feels vulnerable and neutral governance is scarce. Owners fear that a partner will copy the idea, poach employees or capture regulators. Trade associations therefore become more effective at protesting together than producing together.

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Frank Nagle’s Harvard Business Review article offers a correction. Firms should collaborate on the “core”: infrastructure, standards, safety, research and trust, while competing on the “edges”: products, pricing, service, data, distribution and brand. His five tests are market concentration, technology maturity, position in the value chain, rivalry intensity, and regulatory or social acceptance.

Bangladesh does not need rivals to become friends. It needs them to recognise that building five private roads to the same congested destination is not competition. It is expensive loneliness.

Bangladesh has an example, but an imposed one. The National Payment Switch lets competing banks share transaction rails. Bangla QR allows customers of banks, MFS providers such as bKash and Nagad, and others to pay through a common standard while providers compete on convenience, reach and rewards. In garments, brands, manufacturers and unions created the RMG Sustainability Council to preserve factory safety. Voluntary corporate enthusiasm arrived wearing a seatbelt.

Other countries show what becomes possible when collaboration is strategic. India’s UPI connects hundreds of banks on one payment platform, while PhonePe, Google Pay, Paytm and banks fight for customers above it. India’s Indus Towers began as infrastructure shared by telecom rivals, reducing duplicated towers while operators competed on coverage and service. Pharmaceutical rivals jointly funded UK Biobank genome sequencing, finishing it three years earlier. Cybersecurity companies share threat intelligence because one weak player can damage trust in the industry.

Bangladesh’s largest groups should identify foundations that customers do not value separately. Telecom operators can share fibre, towers, rural coverage and cyber-threat intelligence. Pharmaceutical companies can jointly fund bioequivalence laboratories, clinical research and specialist training. Hospitals can build common patient data, blood-bank and laboratory-quality standards. Garment groups can share traceability, recycling and renewable-energy platforms. Logistics companies can agree on shipment identifiers and port-data interfaces.

The economic gains could be substantial: lower duplicated capital expenditure, faster technology adoption, stronger export compliance, greater investor confidence, improved resilience and cheaper services. Smaller firms would gain access to capabilities they could never build alone. The danger, however, is cartelisation. Collaboration must never cover prices, customer allocation, tender coordination or sensitive commercial data.

At national level, such platforms can raise productivity, reduce import dependence, spread innovation beyond dominant groups and make Bangladesh more attractive to investors seeking scalable, rules-based ecosystems rather than empires.

This framework is not only for giant corporations. Clusters of smaller firms can share testing laboratories, training centres, export intelligence and waste-treatment facilities. But large groups must lead because they possess capital, technical talent and convening power, and because smaller participants will not join a platform designed to make its largest founder king.

Boards should map the value chain, select one shared problem, choose the lightest workable partnership, appoint neutral governance, establish data firewalls, publish access rules and define an exit mechanism. Review the boundary annually: today’s competitive edge may become tomorrow’s common utility.

Bangladesh does not need rivals to become friends. It needs them to recognise that building five private roads to the same congested destination is not competition. It is expensive loneliness.

The writer is the founder of BuildCon Consultancies Ltd and BuildNation Ltd