Competitors & Coopetition are interesting concepts in Social Entrepreneurship.
Competitors are those other organizations who are offering similar programs, products, or services to you, to either of your segment groups. They can be other social enterprises/entrepreneurs, or commercial enterprises/entrepreneurs. When they are social enterprises, often times their social mission might be similar to you, or they aim to serve similar beneficiaries.
Sometimes others who would on occasion be considered your competitors (say for a funding grant to run a social program, for example), might be willing to collaborate with you on a project, and so pool your collective resources to tackle your joint social mission agenda. This could be an example of partners that you could enter into ‘coopetition’ with – an organization that you cooperate with on one contract, and yet remain in competition in other aspects of your work.
Further Learning
Check out this resource for further learning:
“Collective Impact“, SSIR, By John Kania & Mark Kramer Winter 2011