Kindle book

Stop treating every competitor like an enemy you must beat

Businesses Are Positive-Sum Games is a strategy book by İsmail Günaydın that argues the strongest companies grow the market instead of fighting over it. It explains game theory basics, Blue Ocean Strategy, coopetition, business ecosystems, positive-sum marketing and team culture, then gives a framework and worksheets to design your own positive-sum business.

Businesses Are Positive-Sum Games. Build Smarter, Scale Faster, and Win Together in the Age of Coopetition and Viral Growth

A competitor launches a feature and your team spends the afternoon copying it. They drop their price, so you drop yours. You keep your best ideas private because someone might steal them, and you refuse a partnership because the other company targets the same customers. Every week feels like defending a small patch of ground, and every win seems to come out of someone else's pocket.

That game is exhausting and it gets more expensive the longer you play it. Feature-for-feature races shrink your margins and blur what makes you different. Secrecy cuts you off from feedback, partners and attention. Inside the company, the same scarcity thinking turns into politics and hiding problems. You end up working harder for a slice that keeps getting thinner.

Most strategy advice is still written like war: crush, capture, dominate. This book starts from a different question: what game are you actually playing? It uses simple game theory to separate zero-sum moves from positive-sum ones, then shows how companies created new demand, partnered with rivals, and built ecosystems where every new participant made the whole system stronger. The examples are concrete, from Blue Ocean cases to a teen app's school-by-school growth.

By the end you will have a five-step framework to redesign your business so customers, partners, creators and your own team all gain more by joining you than ignoring you. You will know how to build a growth loop instead of a leaky funnel, which zero-sum traps to avoid, and how to turn a competitor into a collaborator without handing over your business.

Are you fighting a war you do not need to win?

Racing competitors feature for featureTheir roadmap becomes yours, and you slowly lose the thing that made you different.
Guarding ideas instead of using themFear of copycats keeps you quiet, so you miss feedback, partners and exposure.
Growth that always needs more fuelYour funnel only moves when you pay for it. Nothing compounds on its own.
A team that competes with itselfStatus games and blame inside the company slow down every decision.

Inside the book

01
Game Theory and Positive-Sum LogicZero-sum, negative-sum and positive-sum games explained, plus what the Nash equilibrium means for pricing and competition.
02
Creating New Pie: Blue Ocean StrategyFour ways to create uncontested space: serve non-users, change the value curve, combine categories and break industry assumptions.
03
CoopetitionWhen and how to cooperate with competitors, from partnering with indirect rivals to building interoperability.
04
Business Ecosystems and Value CreationWhy ecosystems are harder to copy than products, and five steps to build one around your offer.
05
The TBH PlaybookA case study of the teen app TBH: built-in viral loops, school-by-school launches, positivity-only content and constraint-driven habits.
06
Positive-Sum MarketingSEO, user-generated content, Quora answers and permissionless apprenticeship as marketing that gives before it asks.
07
Scaling Positive-Sum Culture Inside TeamsIncentive alignment, visible progress, status-free idea sharing and internal coopetition that builds energy instead of politics.
08
Avoiding Zero-Sum TrapsStatus games, scarcity mindset, winner-take-all thinking, over-competing and the fear of sharing.
09
The Strategy Framework and WorksheetsA five-step design framework, a checklist, and worksheets for mapping your ecosystem, designing viral loops and scanning for coopetition.

What does playing a different game look like?

You stop measuring success only by what you take from rivals. You can name who else benefits when you grow, design a loop that brings users back with others in tow, and spot a partnership where you used to see a threat. Your strategy shifts from defending a slice to growing the pie you share.

Get it on Amazon

Read this if

You are stuck in price or feature wars and want a way out that does not mean racing to the bottom.
You run a startup, side project or community and want growth that compounds instead of needing constant ad spend.
You are curious about partnerships, integrations or co-marketing with companies you see as competitors.
You lead a small team and want a culture where people win together.

Skip it if

You want an academic treatment of game theory; this is a short, practical overview with business examples.
You need a step-by-step paid advertising or sales manual; the focus is strategy and mindset.

Who wrote this book?

İsmail Günaydın builds and runs digital businesses as a one-person operation. He is the founder of ModernWebSEO and has built more than 100 websites. He writes about systems, leverage and the practical tools that let a single operator do work that used to need a team. If a chapter can't be acted on by Friday, it didn't earn its pages.

About the author

Questions about the book

What format is Businesses Are Positive-Sum Games?

It is a Kindle ebook in English, available on Amazon. It reads on Kindle devices and in the free Kindle app for phones, tablets and computers.

Who should read it?

Founders, side-hustlers and community builders who feel stuck competing on price or features, and anyone leading a team who wants incentives and culture to pull in the same direction.

What does the book cover?

An introduction and eleven chapters: game theory basics, Blue Ocean Strategy, coopetition, ecosystems, the TBH case study, positive-sum marketing, team culture, zero-sum traps, a strategy framework, a conclusion, and appendices with worksheets and a reading list.

How is it different from a typical competition or strategy book?

Instead of tactics for beating rivals, it asks which game you are playing and shows how to create demand, partner with competitors and build loops where others win alongside you. It ends with practical worksheets rather than theory.

How long is it?

It is a compact read of roughly 4,500 words, short enough to finish in one sitting. The worksheets in the appendix are designed to be filled in afterward for your own business.