Competitor or Collaborator?

Over the past several months, we have spoken with many corporate sustainability professionals (i.e. folks with either "environment" or "sustainability" in their title on their business card) and to a person they have said they personally collaborate with competitors on green issues at work. For example, we spoke with a corporate sustainability engineer at a biotech firm and he related a story about sharing internal ghg inventory spreadsheets with a direct competitor. Similarly, we interviewed a CSO at a large software firm and he mentioned that sustainability was, "the only area we compete with [a large competitor]."

This strikes us as surprising but pragmatic. On the one hand, you might think that companies that compete with each other would want to keep their sustainability programs confidential, but in reality the greater good of helping the environment outweighs what is viewed as a negligible competitive advantage. And much of the perceived value of sustainability initiatives is the press coverage and consumer marketing benefits. You have to look no further than a company's sustainability report to see how open businesses are on this topic. Companies are incredibly detailed and transparent about the initiatives they undertake, the cost of implementing and the expected and actual results. In fact, thousands of companies use standard reports to communicate what they're doing.

The bottom line is that collaborating with other firms, including competitors, is not only good for the environment, it's good for business.