Yen Nguyen
ESL 25.02
Essay #1 Final Draft
March 12, 2015

Side Effects of Competition Have you ever wondered what caused the civilization of mankind? Do you know that competition is one of the leading factors of innovation in technology and in business. We can imagine that life without competition is life without progress because there would be no goals and no desire to strive, to take something further than it’s ever been taken before. People not only compete with themselves, but also with others in order to improve products, services and themselves. Therefore, competition is considered such an important skill. However, Alfie Kohn who wrote the article “Why Competition?” believes that “competition by its very nature is always unhealthy.” He gave specific situations to demonstrate that competition and cooperation don’t work together. Moreover, he insists that competition decreases human relationship because a competitor cares more for its own self-interest than others. In addition, he contends that competition is destructive more than it is beneficial. In my opinion, everything has two sides: positive and negative, and competition is not an exception. Two positive side effects of competition side are improvement and motivation. On the other hand, a negative side effect of competition is that it harms self-esteem.
First of all, a positive side effect of competition is that competition leads to improvement. Competition is a mandatory factor for each enterprise in the market economy. Competition can be considered a fierce race that businesses can’t avoid, but they must find out many ways for dominating the enemy. Competition forces firms to improve the quality of products, services, and even change the style of models to meet the needs of customers. Competition encourages enterprises to adopt new technologies, create pressure on businesses to effectively use its resources to reduce costs, improve quality, innovate designs, create new products competition. For example, the battle between the companies Apple and Samsung hasn’t ended yet. It’s hard to argue whether the iOS system is better than the Android system or not. During the Steve Jobs period, Apple got away from the big screen on the iPhone because they were influenced by the CEO’s notion. He thought that the 3.5 or 4-inch screen was small enough so that customers could use them with one hand. Meanwhile, Samsung dominated Apple with their phones that had a bigger screen. Until 2013, Apple recognized that bigger screens led to more sales. Apple released the products iphone 6 and iphone 6+ on September last year to snatch customers from the hand of Samsung. Therefore, two companies always improve design, display quality, battery life, camera, interface and application in order to beat the competition and attract customers.

Secondly, another positive side of effect of competition is that competition is a powerful fuel for motivation. Actually, you can imagine that the world without competition would probably be very monotonous. Some people like to be motivated by competition, whereas others don’t. Some people seek the satisfaction that comes from victory; others think that competition can motivate their performance. Therefore, both put themselves into a competitive environment to motivate their efforts toward achieving their goals. For example, I ran the Marathon contest in high school. It was very hard for me to run 15 miles. By the end of the five miles, I was gasping for air. However, I didn’t give up. I told myself