Articles, essays, and talks of Rey Lugtu

(Published in The Manila Times under the Managing for Society column, August 23, 2005) FACED with pressure on all fronts to compete in this global economy characterized by lower barriers of entry, specialized and fragmented markets, and technological developments, a growing number of companies are pooling their resources to bring better products and services to the market at a faster, more flexible and more efficient manner. Through these collaborative arrangements or partnerships, companies hope to share knowledge, skills, technologies, products, or markets with each other which would be too costly to develop alone. Partnering reflects an appreciation of the limited resources that companies have in gaining access to new markets, learning a new technology, or developing a new product. Michael Cunningham, author of Partners.Com—How to Profit from the New DNA of Business, calls these arrangements as network partnerships—enabling a firm’s business model to form a business network of suppl...

(Published in Businessworld under The View from taft column, August 4, 2005) The prisoners' dilemma is a peculiar yet perhaps the most renowned game of strategy in social science. Derived from game theory, it helps us understand what influences the balance between cooperation and competition among two or more individuals or entities in business, in economics, even in politics and other social settings. Professors Dixit and Nalebuff, who have extensively studied game theory as applied in business, succinctly recount this simple yet powerful parable about two prisoners: “The police have arrested two suspects and are interrogating them in separate rooms. Each can either confess, thereby implicating the other, or keep silent. No matter what the other suspect does, each can improve his own position by confessing. If the other confesses, then one had better do the same to avoid the especially harsh sentence that awaits a recalcitrant holdout. If the other keeps silent, then one can obtai...