Collaboration instead of competition!

 The following excerpts are from a Facebook posting as advertising. But whether it's just blarney, it's good ideas. And for Harvard Business Review (HBR) to publish such, is a good sign of working against Climate Chaos.

"... The global food system is facing the imperative to produce more with less, balancing the need to feed a growing population with the need to protect the environment and address climate change.

At the same time, business leaders face pressure from shareholders, regulators, and consumers to demonstrate progress on sustainability goals while continuing to meet financial targets.

Most organizations are taking on these challenges the traditional way: individually and competitively, seeking their own solutions as fast as they can. But there is growing realization that given the scale of the environmental issues society faces—including climate change, deforestation, and plastics pollution—this may not deliver the wide-scale change needed at the speed needed.

That’s why some future-forward leaders are using a different approach: collaboration. Working together offers the potential for organizations to expand capacity, share the costs of innovation, decrease risk-trialing multiple approaches, and increase the chance of finding solutions and adapting much faster.

The farmed-salmon sector has used this approach for the past decade, illustrating how a model of collaboration can enable change at speed and scale. Could this be the sort of transformation model the food sector needs to implement so it can address the vast nutrient and climate risks it faces?"

"... In 2013, CEOs of salmon aquaculture companies from around the world formed the Global Salmon Initiative (GSI) to make the industry more sustainable. Recognizing their responsibility to advance the environmental performance of the sector, they chose to work together to pool their knowledge and resources to directly tackle the primary environmental challenges they faced."

"...Within the GSI model, members continually return to the foundation of aligned data and knowledge sharing to support changes in operations. With their commitment to working with the widely acknowledged “gold standard” for certification in aquaculture—the Aquaculture Stewardship Council—and in monitoring the impacts of a changing climate on fish welfare, GSI’s model of bringing companies and CEOs together is to find the common sustainability issues where each company is dependent on improving a shared ecosystem. At its core, this is an intuitive model that other sectors facing shared environmental challenges could easily replicate.

GSI’s model is founded on the premise that if you convene technically adept leaders, give them sufficient data, and allow them to discuss and share ideas, they are likely to find a solution—or at least open the door to new approaches.

One intended consequence of the GSI model is that collaboration doesn’t stop at industry walls. Other stakeholders and nongovernmental organizations recognized GSI for its model of working together and setting clear goals with pragmatic plans by acting as a united voice and inviting both supporters and critics to guide GSI in the right direction. GSI has built partnerships with groups, including World Wildlife Fund (WWF), to develop industrywide improvement programs that strengthen the sector’s environmental performance and credibility. Not all sectors succeed at using this multi-stakeholder approach, but the scale of current global challenges makes collaboration among industry, academia, environmental groups, and policymakers crucial in supporting sectors prioritizing the right initiatives and everyone working off the right information. The salmon sector has not always had many allies in different sectors, but GSI shows that through a commitment to open dialogue and partnership, it is possible to unite groups on a sustainable journey.

Embrace Pre-Competitive Collaboration

GSI calls the collective insight-sharing strategy of its salmon-farming member companies “pre-competitive collaboration”—a term that seems to be gaining traction in the aquaculture sector following the work of GSI. But now the question is how the benefits of collaboration can be expanded in other sectors.

Pre-competitive collaboration is especially effective in industries whose companies use shared resources or face shared challenges. “The private sector can’t just say, ‘I’m doing my part and in my silo,’ without realizing they’re part of a global system,” says Jason Clay, SVP, markets, and executive director, Markets Institute at WWF.

In a time when the global food system is facing mounting pressure, natural resources are being exhausted, and climate change is reaching critical mass, the planet can’t afford to inch toward sustainability one enterprise at a time. Organizations need to embrace collaboration not as an idealistic buzzword, but rather as a critical strategy to make their businesses thrive for the long term.

If more organizations in more sectors embrace the pre-competitive collaboration model that’s succeeding in salmon aquaculture, there is a stronger chance that humanity can make massive strides in our ability to feed the world with nutritious, climate-resilient food."

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Learn more about GSI’s work.

SOURCE: Harvard Business Review posted on Facebook

I still purchase wild-caught salmon rather than farmed. Just my choice. Pay a bit more.

Someone posted this great shot of a roadrunner. I'm reminded my car is the Blue Ridge Roadrunner! We need to be running up there again soon!