"Our future depends heavily on innovation, collaboration and transparency."
Nike CEO Mark Parker
"In areas where big breakthroughs are needed, we must step up joint working with others."
Unilever CEO Paul Polman
Businesses are increasingly collaborating with other businesses, NGOs, governments, development agencies, academia in order to manage better their Social, Environmental and Economic (SEE) impacts. These collaborations may be open-ended or time-limited. Typically, they are designed to provide some mix of problem-solving, forum for debate, good practice identification and dissemination, capacity-building, benchmarking and certification, public policy advocacy and/or programme delivery.
Some collaborative ventures have emerged out of existing business representative organisations/trade associations, whilst others have been initiated from scratch by businesses, Civil Society or the public sector. Some see these organisations and initiatives as part of emerging "soft law" for business and a form of collective, self-regulation or partnered / collaborative governance. An earlier generation of collaborative ventures tended to cover a wide range of business and society issues. More recent examples are industry-sector or issue specific.
Building on David Grayson and Jane Nelson's award-winning book Corporate Responsibility Coalitions: The Past, Present & Future of Alliances for Sustainable Capitalism (Stanford University Press and Greenleaf 2013), David Grayson is now co-ordinating further work looking at the issue and industry-specific initiatives.