Collaborate on the Core. Compete on the Edges.
Using the Tour de France peloton as a model, Nagle argues firms should treat competitive strategy as choosing which parts of the business to run as shared infrastructure with rivals (the "core") versus where to compete head-to-head (the "edges") — most valuable in software and open-source-heavy industries.
Summary
[Partial — paywalled] Harvard Business School's Frank Nagle, known for research on open-source software value, opens by analogizing competitive collaboration to a cycling peloton, where rival teams cooperate on shared aerodynamic benefit while still competing individually. The accessible preview signals an argument for firms to deliberately partition "core" infrastructure — where cooperation with competitors lowers costs for everyone — from "edge" activities where differentiation and competition should be concentrated. Full framework and examples are paywalled.
Editor's opinion
The real content is the economics, not the peloton metaphor: Nagle's own research puts aggregate open-source software value at roughly $9 trillion, estimates eliminating it would raise industry-wide dev costs 3.5x, and finds firms that actively contribute (not just consume) capture about 2x the productivity benefit of passive users — which turns 'should we open-source this' from an ideological debate into an ROI calculation. The five-factor 'core' framework is a genuinely usable decision tool, though this reads as a repackaging of an existing HBS module rather than new thinking for 2026.
Key concepts
Coopetition · shared infrastructure · open-source strategy