I guess it's not proven, though it seems intuitively obvious (which, I admit, is often the sign of pitfalls) ;). I think what hit me during that talk wasn't glorification of competition per se, it was promoting ruthless competition. In the end, team sports and tech challenges are healthy as long as everyone remembers it's just a game and doesn't treat it too seriously. It works in business too, but there people often forget - sometimes because of greed, and sometimes because money is like hit points - losing them hurts; lose enough and you die.
Also interesting note: from my experience, most tech companies aren't really competitive. The market is big enough that most successful companies either compete superficially or sometimes outright cooperate, even when working in the same market.
It's called an eco-system for a reason, the parallels are many and the differences few.
>It's not a proven thing that humanity would excel if people co-operated instead of competed.
It doesn't matter if it's proven or not. We're (hopefully) not automata just doing what's proven to make us excel without consideration for the others.
The only places in which people are really competing directly with each other are in the labor market (which drives the price of labor down) and in professional sports or other one-on-one contests.
Almost everywhere else we co-operate before we compete.
So far this model is a bit like democracy, it may not be optimal but it seems to be the best we have. If you can improve on that model you'll go places but you're going to be ironically in competition with everybody else!