Innovation and Collaboration

Threats and opportunities

A generic threat to every business and sector is new entrants to markets, with alternative business models. Think Amazon versus bricks and mortar book shops.

Many opportunities for industries and sectors to make major increases in their positive contributions to people, planet and profit, fail due to competitive self-interest. Competitive collaboration can enable major shifts in industry dynamics, for example:

Adoption of new safety standards across a sector – improving wellbeing with no cost disadvantage.
Introducing a sector wide recycling scheme – enabling recycling due to the scale, increasing substrate availability, and no cost implications for the businesses or their consumers.

Trust

The initiatives that enable these shifts to happen require a fully shared purpose, and trust. You can benefit from an employee and customer brand perspective by being a driving force in such initiatives. However if this is your driver, the initiative will likely fail due to the lack of shared purpose which will erode trust in with your collaborators.

Join in

Industry groups, associated institutions and even customer special interest groups will often have initiatives running that are by definition matched to their interests. These are easy ways to increase your understanding of what they want, and stimulate ideas and innovations that will help you get there sustainably. They can also provide forums where people can benchmark performance in a positive way. Responses can be anonymised to encourage initial participation, but ultimately will require transparency and the associated trust.

Engage on what matters to people

Our workshops regularly surprise business owners and boards with respect to the enthusiasm and passion for the subject coming from their people. The engagement it generates when channelled is a fantastic vehicle to encourage and capture innovation ideas. And their effective execution to make your profit sustainable.