From ecology to economics, from finance to sociology, we encounter group
of individuals, are those animals or persons, trading products or material
assets, in fierce competition for resources or goods, for prestige or social
status. Is unavoidable and almost trivial that large systems
constituted by a large number of constituents in mutual interaction with each
other, will be characterized by some kind of competitive behavior. In fact,
this "natural" property of complex systems is so broad to be included in a
single research project. Here we focus in two main directions: first in the
competition for space which characterize basic physical concepts such as
diffusion under particular crowded conditions; and second, competition in
time when different interactions processes take different amounts of time to
develop. In the former line we will concentrate in particular on complex
networks, for example networks of neurons or highways networks where the
diffusion processes strictly modify itself in accordance to the network
topology and large number of particles, molecules, individuals, etc,
spreading on it. In the latter one instead, we intent to show that competition
is not exclusive at all as previously thought. In fact, due to the delays of
processes evolutions, the diversity is preserved and encouraged even in
strong competition regime in complete disagreement with the actual theory
but in full accordance with the experimental evidences.