Corporate collaboration How bodies, businesses and organisations worked together to tackle the pandemic
Some of the biggest challenges in the consumer-facing sector, from sustainability to diversity to food poverty, will require connectedness and collaboration between businesses in the sector. If companies continue to cooperate to the same extent as during Covid-19, we can expect our sector to grow, develop, innovate and become an incredibly exciting place.
In April, the Consumer Goods Forum launched the New Coalition on Collaboration for Healthier Lives, aiming to help its members “drive more impactful collaborations that benefit both people and planet and seize the opportunities offered by purpose-driven business models”. While this initiative had been planned well before Covid-19, its timely launch was indicative of the overall mood of the consumer-facing sector during the crisis.
Swapping competition for collaboration
After all, in the last few months we have seen an unprecedented level of corporate collaboration and knowledge sharing taking place between businesses. At the height of the crisis, for example, leaders from each of the sector’s biggest food businesses were meeting virtually on a weekly basis to share insights and discuss how to help each other in keeping the nation fed. In an industry usually fraught with competition and fierce rivalries, Covid-19 has served to prove what can be achieved when businesses work together.
In March, the UK government relaxed competition laws to allow retail businesses to work together to meet the unprecedented demand brought on by stockpiling. This development came to define the early stages of the crisis. The spirit of collaboration could also be seen in tech, with rivals Apple and Google teaming up to develop Covid-19 tracing apps. It will be interesting to see whether this period will foster a new normal of cooperation and a potential wave of collaboration on other industry challenges, from privacy to diversity.
29
