Abstract
It is widely recognized that accurately identifying competitors is a challenge for many companies and entrepreneurs. It is one that they cannot escape from, as failing to do so is a recipe for problems. Amongst other factors, competitor identification is challenging because of the complex nature of the competitive relationships that arise in business environments. In this paper, we tackle this issue by means of an initial ontological analysis on competition grounded in the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO). Our analysis, the first of its kind in the literature, allows us to explain why and when competition arises, as well as to distinguish between different three types of competitive relationships, namely direct, indirect and potential competition.