TrendsCooperation

There is a clear trend – cross-border cooperation creates new business opportunities. The challenge is to communicate and agree. And the future may lie in artificial intelligence when people aren’t enough.TEXT JAKOB LUNDBERG AND MARCUS OLSSON

EVERYONEGAINS

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FROMCOOPERATION

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“EVERYONE HAS THE SAME INFORMATION AT THE SAME TIME AND EVERYONE IS WORKING TOWARDS GETTING THE CITY TO WORK EFFICIENTLY.”ROHIT TALWAR

HINGS ARE run­ning smoothly in Rio de Janeiro. Po­lice and ambulanc­es arrive quickly when something happens. Engi­neers arrive quick­ly when a broken traffic light needs

fixing. Sewer system blockages can cause nasty flooding unless preventative meas­ures are already in place. This city of 12 million people now has, through unique cooperation, a coordination centre with 30 organizations all working together.

The walls are lined with screens mon­itoring key societal functions. Centro de Operações gathers vast amounts of data from surveillance cameras, sensors, smart traffic lights and private users of various apps. The information is shared by the various government departments and pri­vate companies involved in the project.

Brazil’s second largest city has joined the cooperation trend.

Thinking way outside the box can get cities to function – and companies to grow.

“The reason Rio de Janeiro has succeed­ed is that it has a common database where

information can be accessed to make quick decisions. Everyone has the same information at the same time and every­one is working towards getting the city to work efficiently,” says Rohit Talwar.

He works as a global futurist and runs the London­based consultancy firm Fast Future Research, helping companies with strategic future thinking.

“The most successful companies have one thing in common. They create smart ways of starting conversations and sharing information between all parties in the company’s ecosystem. An increas­

ing number of deals are now turned into major projects where lots of players are involved. Focus is always on finding better ways of cooperating.”

ROHIT THINKS that the most difficult thing is actually starting cooperation – and then to keeping it going.

“There are many forces at work. Policies and motivation vary between organizations. People at the top might agree while people below them might not be willing to play ball. Companies often get surprised by how difficult it is to get good cooperation to work. Everything boils down to the individual. If you can get people to work together and trust one another then you’re half way there. There are deep­rooted challenges when differ­ent companies, cultures, languages and working methods need to work together.”

“It’s not a naturally smooth process when an Indian, Chinese and American firm are to work together. They have different ways of managing and making decisions. Information flows in different ways,” he says and continues:

“Another key point is how we work together in work teams and between vari­ous parts of our own organizations. How do we make use of an idea at one end,

TThis coordination centre at Centro de Operações in Rio de Janeiro, has 30 organizations working together. All have access to huge amounts of data with the aim of providing speedy, more effective efforts.

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1 RESEARCH PROJECT WITH MANY COMPANIES

Pharmaceutical giants Sanofi and Merck are two competing companies now collaborating with one another. A joint research project now sees these companies working together on developing cancer medicine. Both companies are also working together with the authorities and public sector organizations on a number of projects.

2 JOINT DEVELOPMENT WITH THE COMPETITION

PSA Peugeot and Toyota developed components together to build three different small city cars. The result was the Peugeot 107, Citroën C1 and Toyota Aygo. Manufacture of all three cars started in Kolin in the Czech Republic in 2005 and have become sales successes for both car manufacturers.

3 OPEN INNOVATIONWikipedia, the multilingual, web-based encyclopaedia, is the most visited

on the internet. It mainly has free, open content that is developed by its users. The English version is biggest, with over four million articles. Wikipedia con-tains a total of 30 million articles.

4 SHARING KNOWLEDGESouth-South Cooperation is an exchange project where knowledge,

resources and technology are shared between developing countries in the southern hemisphere. One of the goals is to set up a joint bank, similar to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. More than USD 450 million was pledged by investors, companies, governments and other parties present at the organization’s latest trade fair.

5 CUSTOMER-DRIVEN INNOVATION

Blizzard Entertainment has created the series of World of Warcraft (WoW) games. One of the success factors was inviting in users for beta testing during development. WoW had sales of over USD 1 billion in 2013 and a market share of 36 per cent in its genre.

6 SHARING RISKS AND REWARDS

Aera Energy is a collaboration between energy giants Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell. Aera is California’s leading oil and gas producer (30 per cent of overall production in the state). Exxon and Shell shared costs for manufacturing and other investments. Aera’s income in 2013 amounted to USD 5 billion.

Various ways of cooperating

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which can be used effectively somewhere else in the company? That’s where IT is important for sharing ideas. Everyone wants to know how to work with digital media, across cultural and organizational boundaries.”

THE CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY is a trendsetter, where many contractors, investors and interested parties work together. Sharing information is the key.

“A construction project worth EUR 1 billion might have 20 partners. What can we do to work together optimally? Well, we work with the same data at the same time. Everyone has the chance of affecting content immediately. This also minimizes the risk of various parties wasting time doing the same thing.”

Dick Stroud is a corporate strategist from the UK. Despite clear trends towards collaboration he is still seeing some areas slow to react.

“I’m surprised how little collaboration there still is between different companies and organizations.

The need to keep information a secret seems to have followed us down through the generations. Many bosses in their 30s are just as preoccupied in keeping tabs

Rohit TalwarLives in: London, England.Occupation: Advisor, author and lecturer.Rohit uses humour, inspiration and provocation when advising global companies, both in risk assessment and development strategies.

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on their competitors as people in their 60s. This is a real disappointment because I believe that companies can learn a lot from one another without compromising their commercial successes. Competition between companies scares many of them from looking for new, common ways of development. But that’s where most of the opportunities lie, if they are willing to take that step.”

JOURNALIST ANDREAS EKSTRÖM has written a book about Google. He’s a futures analyst and lectures on the social effects of digital realignment.

“The digital revolution has given rise to completely new ways of developing busi­nesses at various levels. And despite com­petition being tougher than ever it seems as though more companies are choosing a softer approach to collaboration. The val­ue of learning from one another is vast. Everyone now knows that. But at the same time there is a risk of conformism, with everyone moving towards medio­cre market niches, where things are safe rather than challenging. When was the last time we really saw a “game changer”, an invention that profoundly changed the market or people’s behaviour? I

would say that we haven’t seen anything like that since the introduction of tablet computers,” says Andreas.

There are lots of examples of technical collaborations deemed necessary and successful. Joint standards like 3G, 4G, Bluetooth and USB were the result of extensive collaboration.

In these cases Ericsson, Intel, IBM and

Microsoft saw the benefit of working together with their competitors in their respective industry.

“The global Bitcoin community is another example of how technology has developed through collaboration,” says Rohit Talwar. “People worked together and came up with common solutions. They created a completely new finan­

cial system with digital currency and blockchain technology as a security mechanism. These models have complete­ly altered financial services. In this field the players are pioneers and need to work closely with one another because their in­novation is receiving a lot of resistance.”

MANY INDUSTRIES need to accept help from outside.

“Some pharmaceutical companies are getting better at accepting ideas from companies and other researchers. Astra Zeneca is a company that often seems to succeed in collaboration. The same is true of its competitor, Glaxo­SmithKline,” says Rohit. He believes that common sharing models for taking risks and reward is another area that P

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A unique collaboration is in operation here at Dallas/Fort Worth international airport between the airport and airlines. All development is run jointly and the airlines have a lot of input in terms of how profits are spent.

Andreas EkströmLives in: Lund, Sweden.Profession: Journalist, author and lecturer.Andreas wrote a book called “The Google Code”, neutrally explaining how Google reasons and thinks.

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WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME WE REALLY SAW A “GAME CHANGER”, AN INVENTION THAT PROFOUNDLY CHANGED THE MARKET OR PEOPLE’S BEHAVIOUR?ANDREAS EKSTRÖM

will grow in importance in the future. One example he mentions is the DFW,

Dallas/Fort Worth international airport, operated by 30 or so airlines, including American Airlines, Lufthansa and British Airways.

“The airport has a very interesting way of making decisions together with the airlines. The system builds on how services and stores improve and there is an underlying, sophisticated system for how revenues from stores, restaurants, hotels and other companies should be shared. The airport also has a lot of influence over how any further profits are spent and invested.

At DFW, one of the world’s top 10 busiest airports, competitors have joined forces to share in the profits made.

In other sectors it is more common to meet at an early stage and then separate with a joint result that they take with them.

“We see this in ‘pre­competitive research projects’, often partly financed by government authorities. A lot is being done to get different companies to share information and results. This is in an attempt to move forwards with some­thing that will benefit ordinary people, and which companies can then try and commercialize.”

Andreas Ekström says that collabora­tion models are being refined. Signif­icant developments have been seen in terms of collaborating directly with the end customer.

“Releasing early beta versions of products has been extremely successful for many companies. It creates a feeling of unity around a project between the manufacturer and the users when they, at an early stage, get to affect the products and content.”

SHARING INFORMATION is the common denominator in collaboration trends. It creates trust and boosts people’s will­ingness to help one another. Human interaction will have a more minor role in future. Goodwill between individu­als might go a long way but not always enough. When Rohit talks about the future’s most ground­breaking collabora­tion he believes it won’t even be human.

“There is another route. Artificial Intelligence (AI) will change a lot. We will see “AI agents” that learn how to act correctly,” he says.

These “agents” will be computer pro­grammes instructed to perform specific tasks, and make their own decisions based on what collaboration partners are re­quired to achieve a successful outcome.”

“They will be able to meet targets and constantly collaborate with those who can help them achieve their goals. The benefit will be that these agents will not have a political agenda. They won’t need promoting, they won’t need bonuses and are not at risk of being fired. Their only motive will be meeting targets and they will find the collaboration required to achieve it.” ✖

Dick StroudLives in: Salisbury, EnglandOccupation: Consultant, lecturer and writer.Dick mainly works at the 20plus30 PR agency, which specializes in reaching out to the new group of well-to-do consumers over 50.

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