Leveraging the Power of Collaborations

TARGET GROUP: COMPANIES

OBJECTIVES

·        To provide practical guidance on how to determine when to join or start a collaboration and how to design partnerships for success, measure progress, navigate changing contexts and demands, and how to know when and how to end a collaboration.

SUMMARY

Collaboration is increasingly recognized as necessary for making progress on the systemic challenges at the forefront of the sustainability agenda. The desk research, focus groups, and interviews undertaken in developing this report explored the dynamics driving the evolution of company collaboration in and across sectors and highlighted some of the innovative collaboration models that have developed. Our research also led us to create a collaboration life cycle framework to guide sustainability practitioners during development of and participation in effective and impactful collaborations.

Corporations have been leveraging collaborative multisector engagements to tackle sustainability topics for decades. Issues like climate change, water scarcity, income inequality, education, smart cities, and others require collaboration to enact change. Shifts stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic have added complexity and urgency and increased the potential for innovative solutions to emerge. While sustainability issues have increased in intricacy due to broad-sweeping societal and political changes, our research shows that companies are evolving their approaches to collaboration to meet the increasing demands these challenges pose.

REFERENCE

https://www.sustainability.com/globalassets/sustainability.com/thinking/pdfs/report-leveraging-the-power-of-collaborations.pdf