Collaboration is very popular. Fine. But does it get results?
I attended the launch of an interesting report on Wednesday, Sustainable Competitive Advantage: The 4th Economic Revolution.
The two very interesting speakers impressed me, Helen Fleming, Climate Change Director at Tesco and Trevor Payne, Director of Facilities at University College London Hospital. Both discussed the importance of collaboration when tackling sustainability issues. They discussed how useful they have found sharing ideas across their own networks and other industries.
So what?
Economies of scale and sharing ideas are nothing new. They are vital if we are to reduce the impact of our lifestyles on the environment.
However, their honesty about the huge challenges they face in reducing their own footprints as well as across supply chains impressed me. Tesco’s targets are very ambitious. But even they did not have all the answers when it comes to changing consumer behaviour or how they will meet their aim to be a zero carbon business by 2050.
Sustainability is a small world. The parallels between company initiatives, even in completely different industries are much closer than you might first think.
And well worth a more inclusive approach for progress to be made.