Thread: Competitiveness

конкурент- competitor
конкурентный - competitive
конкурентоспособный - competitive
конкурентоспособность - competitiveness

This may be the longest word I've seen so far. What exactly is the difference/added meaning from the -способный compared to just конкурентный?
Is конкурентоспособный more implying the ability and possibility to do well, whereas конкурентный is just the interest or obsession to do well?
For instance:
"He got angry when he lost, because he is so competitive."
vs
"Learning a foreign language can give one a competitive edge in the modern job market."

The word конкурентоспоспособность makes me happy because it shows how German is not doing anything special with its word mashing, and Russian, I feel [biasly] is doing it better, and more sparingly. The standard here in the U.S. is to fawn over German because it supposedly "makes words for complex ideas that no other language can quite nail down". In reality they just delete a space, or say two nouns right after one another, to create a "new word". Hell, English can do that, it's just not as popular a practice. Say any combination of turbulence, be it two words mashed together or just random sounds, explain its definition and bam you've got yourself a new word of whatever fantastical new meaning you describe. English is only at all restricted in this because the conceptual boundaries between parts of speech are blurry so it may sound like an adjective followed by a noun, rather than a noticeably deliberate new creation of a noun.

You can decompose "конкурентноспособный" to "способный конкурировать" and this is the exact meaning: "able to compete".
"конкурентный" is adjective derived from "конкуренция", it is more abstract and covers all related things.
"конкурентный" and "конкурентноспособный" are not interchangeable in many cases:
"Он конкурентный" = wrong! Right way is "Он конкурентноспособный" (He is able to compete). I do not know exact rule, maybe subject of "конкурентный" cannot be animate object, but I am not sure...
but
"Он имеет конкурентноспособное преимущество" = wrong! Right way is "Он имеет конкурентное преимущество" (He has competitive advantage). It's logical because advantage cannot be "able to". It's not right category of object.
Product can be "able to", so "Этот продукт конкурентноспособен" is ok.

Also:
"конкурентный анализ" = "analysis of competitiveness"
while
"конкурентноспособный анализ" = "analysis able to compete (with another analyses)". you should say "анализ конкурентноспособности" to revert to the meaning above.

As I can see, конкурентный is just technical term, used in conjunction with such words as анализ, процедура,...
Конкурентоспособный - about persons, firms, states and other acting subjects. Yes, it' about their abilities to survive and thrive.