Forgetting About Competition For A Moment

Traditionally, we’ve seen Big Pharma companies obsessed with beating each other.

This week, President Biden announced that pharmaceutical giant Merck would help make Johnson & Johnson’s single-shot coronavirus vaccine.

This is one of the latest examples of companies joining forces to fight back against COVID-19.

When the stakes and the purpose are high (saving lives), it seems like we tend to see competition differently.

Winning, dominating the market, crushing the competition are typically hugely energy-consuming activities that take away crucial resources from bringing more medical advances to patients at less cost to society. But in this case, it’s inspiring to see what happens when we’re coming together as a community to fill a human need.

I wonder what would happen if we didn’t wait for a crisis to think like that. Or maybe it’s human nature to have to be forced to think like that.

In any case, forgetting about the very notion of competition has some benefits.

The main one is a renewed focus on moving toward what’s possible instead of letting our fears consume our creative potential.