Patio Pondering: Teaching the Competition

Last night was an historic evening here in Indiana when the Hoosiers won the National College Football Championship. This Boilermaker tips his hat to them as I enjoy my coffee and gaze across the frozen tundra that is our backyard landscaping. If the weather models are right, we’re in for a monster storm this weekend, so this morning I’ll enjoy the sun from the kitchen with a hot cup of coffee.

As I watched the celebrations on television and social media, I kept thinking about the secret behind Coach Cignetti’s success. That’s when it occurred to me: I once treated my own “secret sauce” very differently — and it likely cost me business and contributed to the downfall of an entire feeding program.

In agriculture, we’re wired to teach. We host field days, swap ideas over tailgates, and explain everything we know to anyone who asks. We call it helping — and we’re proud of it. It’s part of our culture, part of our identity, and for the most part it’s been a strength.

But teaching has a boundary, and I learned the hard way what happens when you ignore it.

I spent years working in an environment that valued relationships and transparency. We told the world exactly what we used — the ingredients, the suppliers, the backstory, all of it. We even went so far as to name the products and suppliers in our marketing materials and presentations. We were “Intel Inside” without the exclusivity of “Intel Inside.”

At the time, that approach built credibility and made sure our “friends in the industry” were compensated and recognized. It was considered the right thing to do.

But as the industry evolved, that same transparency started to erode credibility and profit potential. What had once been reputation-enhancing became nothing more than giving away the playbook. Instead of projecting technical aura, it revealed supplier relationships that were sometimes outdated and rarely strategic.

When I eventually recognized the shift — and realized those “friends in the industry” weren’t helping me anymore — I began changing how I talked about our work. I shifted from “A blend of A from X, B from Y, and C from Z” to “a blend of ingredients designed to…” I replaced brand names with words like “supplier,” “partner,” and “source.” It wasn’t about secrecy — it was about modern business boundaries and preserving expertise.

That’s when I ran into the cultural resistance.

Supplier diplomacy inside the company outweighed sales strategy, and protecting feelings outranked protecting revenue. We couldn’t risk offending our “friends in the industry,” even if those friends were also selling their “secrets” to our competition.

Eventually, I had to accept that the industry had shifted, and so had the rules for preserving value.

And here’s the part that sticks with me:

Agriculture doesn’t just give away the playbook at the farm gate. We do it geopolitically. We exported soybean genetics, planting techniques, fertility programs, pest management, and infrastructure under the banner of feeding the world. In the process, we taught our largest soybean competitor how to beat us — and congratulated ourselves for the progress.

We didn’t just transfer commodities; we transferred capability. We handed over the technical aura of U.S. soybean production in the same way we once handed over our supplier lists — with the best of intentions and the worst of outcomes.

Transparency builds trust. Total transparency destroys margin.

So here’s what I’m wrestling with this morning:

Where else are we applauding our generosity while someone else quietly takes our margin?