Pearl Jam Twenty: lessons about competition

Lisa and I were watching Pearl Jam Twenty on PBS the other night and there was a section that caught my attention.  Nirvana had established the grunge scene and was top of the charts when Pearl Jam came along and rocketed up the charts in their own right.  A bunch of reporters were talking to Kurt Cobain of Nirvana probing him about Pearl Jam knocking them off the number one spot.  Kurt's response is what caught my attention and I'm paraphrasing here:

"I listen to Pearl Jam.  I've talked to Eddie Vedder on the phone and I really like him.  The people that like our music also like their music.  Why are you guys trying to create a rivalry between us?"

I really like that and the notion was driven home again while listening to some older podcasts of Pat Flynn from SmartPassiveIncome.com (don't remember exactly which since I've been doing an SPI marathon to get caught up).  In a nutshell, the conversation was about not looking at people that have similar blog topics as you as your competition.  It's better to look at them as people with similar interests that may be good friends and partners.

Like Kurt Cobain pointed out, people like your stuff, people like my stuff, let's keep making good stuff that people like.