Are collaboration and utility competition mutually exclusive?
Several years ago in the U.S. when utility deregulation was a new concept and before there was 100% utility participation in rapidpartsmart, we would get this question from nuclear utilities, “If my company will soon be competing with other utilities for new business, why should my company collaborate with those same utilities to solve nuclear parts supply problems?” That was a valid question then and we are again hearing it here in Europe as we now expand rapidpartsmart. Our answer is as follows: a wise man once said, “An ounce of experience is worth a pound of theory.” Experience shows us that many highly competitive industries collaborate for mutually beneficial solutions. Collaboration has always been easier in industries that have public safety as part of their primary mission or that require large amounts of capital investment, or both. Certainly the nuclear utility industry meets those criteria. But others do too. The airline industry, for example, is such an industry. That indu
