Title “Award-Winning Antitrust Study Finds Competitors Share Directors Far More Often Than Previously Known” compressed to fit within title limits.

Paper: https://columbialawreview.org/content/anticompetitive-direct...

After having seen movies like UHF and Anchor Man, I was at an outdoor event covered by the local news, and saw one of the cameramen having some trouble lugging his equipment over the terrain, when several employees from other TV stations helped him with it. The contrast from those movies surprised me, despite having grown up with a friend who's parents' were in the broadcast industry, and having met several of their co-workers that were all very kind.

We tend to think everyone competing dislikes each other, but in reality many fields have a small pool of experienced works, so they only have a few companies to choose between. Combine that with the modern HR strategy of prioritizing promoting from outside the company, and add on California not recognizing non-compete agreements, and you end up with a pool of workers that have mostly been co-workers with each other, at some point in the past. The higher up you get, the smaller the pool, so you end up with a lot of overlap.

My favorite nearby shopping center has a Trader Joe's and a Grocer Outlet, with the former being founded by Joe Coulombe and the latter growing significantly with him on their board. (See his book: Becoming Trader Joe) He had a lot of influence on both, with both still having a noticeably similar obsession with cheap wine and a short time of availability for any given item, but they're both different enough to warrant being in the same shopping center, and are both worth visiting.