Competitors as valuable rivals

The other day, an executive I coach, let’s call him Bill, came up with a problem he faced with a business partner in Morocco.
Recently, the Moroccan partner explained that he wants to expand his business to other products that do not exist in Bill’s product range. He was investigating opportunities with one of Bill’s competitors with those products in their range.

According to Bill, this was a problem because he was afraid that his competitor would use this opportunity to “steal” his business partner…