The Collaboration Economy: How to Meet Business, Social, and Environmental Needs and Gain Competitive Advantage

“Leaders need to implement these ideas to recover our economy, save our environment, bring about social justice, and create a healthier world.”
—Deepak Chopra Author of Superbrain

Praise for The Collaboration Economy

“The Collaboration Economy is a powerful read for businesses and organizations that are passionate about enhancing community well-being and solving the challenging issues of our times. As Eric Lowitt so deftly illustrates, magical things happen when you bring together the Golden Triangle of business, government, and civil society to form partnerships that are deeply focused, uncompromisingly actionable, and highly accountable. This is an important book for any community-minded leader.”
—Muhtar Kent, chairman and chief executive officer, The Coca-Cola Company

“Any business model that aims to deliver positive economic and environmental and social outcomes, as we in Unilever aspire to, will depend heavily on cooperation, collaboration, and partnerships. We need the kind of innovative thinking that makes The Collaboration Economy such a riveting read.”
—Paul Polman, chief executive officer, Unilever

“WWF’s most enduring achievements come through unlikely partnerships. We face challenges too vast to solve by ourselves. It will take the energy and efforts of many to create a sustainable future for all. The Collaboration Economy takes a clear-headed view on this important topic… an insightful, engaging read.”
—Carter Roberts, president and chief executive officer, World Wildlife Fund

“Organizations must embrace an interdependent view where the interests of all stakeholders throughout their value chains are addressed in mutually beneficial ways. Eric Lowitt continues to bring clarity to the evolving relationship among profit, growth, and responsibility. The path forward relies on organizations committing to collaborative approaches to achieve the operational agility, competitive resiliency, and effective risk management that will sustain their success.”
—Steve Bowen, president and chief executive officer, Maine Pointe

How can we best achieve growth that addresses our most vexing challenges? Can companies collaborate their way to competitive advantage? And what if this group of collaborators included rivals, as well as entities from the public and civil sectors? What could we then accomplish?

From strategy and sustainability expert Eric Lowitt (the author of the bestselling book The Future of Value) comes his next-step resource, The Collaboration Economy. In this ground breaking book, he outlines a new economic paradigm, one that yields growth in a way that strengthens the global systems we rely on daily for survival (for example, water, food, and energy). Lowitt’s Collaboration Economy model shows why and how the private, public, and civil sectors must collaborate to drive prosperity that can last in perpetuity.

The Collaboration Economy offers organizations (of any type or size) an approach for transforming their industries’ business models into models that yield prosperity in perpetuity by embracing, not ignoring, social conditions and dimensions. Lowitt reveals how leaders can transform companies’ ‘mindsets’ in order to build coalitions, view all vendors as partners, and collaborate their way to competitive advantage. This innovative approach also explores how companies can alter their procurement, logistics, and operations activities to lower and manage external costs, such as the economic cost of sending waste to landfills, and form alliances with vendors, rivals, local communities, and other nontraditional partners.

Case studies from the leaders of the Collaboration Economy, including Unilever, Coca-Cola, GE, Nestlé Waters North America, Grieg Green, and the European Parliament demonstrate how the Collaboration Economy model works in the real world.

Competitive advantage for companies and prosperity in perpetuity for all are within reach. The Collaboration Economy is designed to empower leaders of industry, of government, and of society to kick start growth that addresses our deepest challenges.