Compete against others and none will help you; compete against your own last work and anyone can, since your gain costs them nothing.

The claim

Rivalry decides who will help you. Someone competing against others gets no help from them, while someone measured only against their own previous work can be helped by anyone, because their gain is nobody's loss. Applied to organisations: one that sets its standard as being better than it was, and looks for people who share its cause rather than for an edge over rivals, turns would-be competitors into allies. The case offered is a single runner with cerebral palsy whose teammates, having finished, come back to run the rest of the course with him; it illustrates the mechanism and does not test it. The claim is weakest in markets where customers choose between rivals, which is most markets.