In our forthcoming book, Wikinomics (Portfolio 2006) Don Tapscott and I describe how a growing number of forward-thinking companies are blowing open their laboratory doors and inviting partners and competitors alike to share the risks and rewards of developing deep, long-term innovations in their industries. We argued that collaboration makes sense in a world where no company, no matter how large or sophisticated, has the internal resources required to produce all of the innovations they need to compete. Even pharmaceutical companies have abandoned proprietary projects and shared their research in a bid to speed progress on mapping the human genome.
Now it seems that every time I open a newspaper I’m delighted to find yet another case where this new mode of collaborative innovation is taking root.
Maritime shipping conglomerate Wilh. Wilhelmsen, for example, is one of several companies behind a new far-reaching research and development alliance called the Global Leadership and Technology Exchange that has been mandated to investigate cleaner and more efficient technologies for reducing carbon emissions. Participants in the inaugural meeting included GE,BP, IBM and Bayer. Xynteo, the Anglo-Nordic enterprise agency and founder of the consortium, expects other large companies to participate in forthcoming meetings, including the California-based utility company Pacific Gas and Electric and Det Norske Veritas, the international risk management foundation.
Writing in the Financial Times, Wilh. Wilhelmsen chief executive Ingar Skaug says:
“This is not some grand talking shop. Rather, the exchange reflects a fundamental shift in the way industrial companies co-operate. Led by Xynteo, participating companies have agreed that they cannot afford to invest on their own in new technologies. The burden of rising oil prices and transport costs, together with new environmental regulations, is encouraging us jointly to explore technology untried in our industry. . . If we can use technologies that lead to new standards in our industry, it benefits everyone. The same is true in aviation, mining, oil exploration or almost any sector.”
Companies can’t and shouldn’t open the kimono all of the time, but I expect we’ll see a lot more of this in the future as more companies see the benefits of pooling their resources to tackle shared issues and problems.
