Business is a game where there can be either a loser and a winner or all losers or all winners. If you have to be a winner in business, it is not necessary that you have to make others lose. It is rather how smartly you play your game. In this game, there are definitely no rules. It lies in the hands of the businessman to change the rules and the game according to time. Sometimes the game works out well if all the players join hands together and win, or sometimes there is a good result when the right players step out of the game at the right time. So in this high stake game of business, the essence lies in whether you are playing the right game at the right time.
Take for example, two cola companies A and B,depending on other companies X,Y,Z for sugar,carbondioxide and water. Say, X is a famous brand but another sugar producing company W enters the scenario. Initially, W will have to fix prices lower than that of X so that A and B buy raw material from it , they might have to run on a loss too, to boost their sales. Now, A and B start buying sugar from W,and the amount from X decreases. As a result, X decreases its price a little more. If the quality of sugar from X is much better than that at W, A and B now rush to X as it supplies for a lower ate than before. If X shoots up its rate the scenario changes. In the above case A and B are the benefiters but it depends on the quality of sugar from X and W as to who wins the race. Apart from this, X has lost its profits during the competition. This is just a bird’s eye view of the complexity of a business deal.
Game strategy in business is changing the rules of the game from lose- lose to win-win. Each move makes a difference. Use of intuition is crucial in any game. You can improve your added value by decreasing the added value of others. For example,if A has 26 cards and 26 others have one card each which pair with each of A’s cards, for each pair formed A gets rs.100,then if A pays rs.50 to each of the people in the group,he would for sure make a profit of 1300. But if he hides few of his cards then the probability of pairing decreases and he can decrease the cost of the other cards-so he changes the rules.
Hence if you look at business with an allocentric view with the notion that everyone should win, you have greater chances of winning. The same applies with team work. Hence game theory plays a crucial role in business , latently or visibly.