We close our minds to learning from them. I believe that the principle of competing with is as valuable and necessary in electronics as it is in wine making or sports. We have advanced rapidly in the hardware side of electronics because engineers share their ideas in papers and conferences and leverage new achievements from the products and ideas of others. Engineers have created a diversity of options for most customers and they constantly improve choices by responding to customer preferences. Engineers get a minimum of government protection in the form of patents.
Open standards are one result of competing with.
These are technical standards, for example the IBM PC Bus or Intel's new PCI Bus, which were developed by one company or a group of companies and then put in the public domain for everyone to use. Hewlett Packard was probably the first, and is certainly the most consistent, company to contribute to open standards in electronics. Competing with takes speed and skill. The schooner's massive sails and sleek design enabled its crew to outrun other ships. Competing against fosters secrecy and a control mentality within a company and between a company and its customers.