Discover innovation partnerships and how they could help your businesses reach its’ sustainability goals.
Partnerships are an increasingly important part of businesses’ innovation strategies. In the latest UK Innovation survey, 58% of innovative businesses cited partnerships as a key feature of their innovation strategies. And given the scale and shared nature of the challenge of reaching net zero, finding partners becomes even more important.
Innovating to be me green is a new area of focus for many, so the specific skills, technologies and expertise needed are not commonly found in-house – even in businesses who are traditionally innovative. And, in many cases, innovations for net zero and sustainability are pre-competitive meaning that the knowledge, expectations and standards of the market have not yet been established. Considering these challenges, cooperation and partnerships will be vital for businesses reaching the shared goal of net zero.
Discover some of the partnerships the businesses that contributed to the CBI’s Be More Green campaign formed, and how these partnerships supported firms on their innovation journeys.
Business-to-academia
These partnerships between universities or research organisations and businesses are mutually beneficial. Universities can provide knowledge, research expertise and access to skills, research or test facilities, and businesses bring commercialisation capabilities, and access to real world data, customer bases, and large-scale facilities.
Partnership in practice
- TATA Steel partnered with Swansea University to work specifically on reducing carbon emissions in their products. Together they have developed the UK’s first regional centre of excellence for steel innovation creating a high-tech research cluster that links the local supply chain in new research projects, commercial opportunities, funded projects, training and further cooperation and collaborations
- Sainsbury’s have partnered with Imperial College London to help the company meet its’ net zero commitment, for example, by reducing the energy consumption of Sainsbury’s refrigeration system
- OnGen have partnered with Heriot-Watt and Edinburgh Napier Universities, as they identified their engineering expertise which would help develop their software at pace and scale
- Costain have formed a five-year research partnership with the University of Cambridge and National Highways to work on digital twins, data science, automation and smart materials
- Compass Group have partnered with the University of Oxford’s LEAP programme to trial eco-labels which highlight the environmental impact of meals to influence consumer behaviour.
Cross-sector collaboration
These partnerships occur between two private-sector businesses in different sectors. The relationship can be adoption of another business’ technology or as a mutually beneficial collaboration between two parties to develop new technologies.
Partnership in practice
- IHG worked with Arup and Schneider electric to develop a solution for faster, accurate data entry that could inform employee guidance on actions to decarbonise
- Sainsbury’s adopted Aerofoil technology, originally developed by Williams Advanced Engineering to solve excess energy usage by their refrigeration system
- Costain worked with SAP and Deloitte to develop a cloud based digital platform for the Department for Transport’s ‘Transport infrastructure efficiency strategy living lab’.
Big Fish, Little Fish
Relationships between larger businesses and innovative start-ups and scale-ups. These partnerships enable large businesses to access innovative ideas and technologies; and smaller businesses to test their innovations at scale or with real world customers, accelerating their development and providing routes to market. Use the CBI's new toolkit: how to build successful innovation partnerships, to learn from other businesses on creating and managing successful relationships.
Partnership in practice
- Whitbread have adopted technologies from innovative small businesses like EndoTherm and Synergy to reduce energy use in their cooking processes
- OnGen license their technology to larger businesses to enable informed, data-led assessments for investing in renewables.
Open Innovation forums
Businesses host open innovation forums to bring together people from outside the business, often across sectors and from within academia to ideate on specific innovation challenges. This can be start of a more structured partnership.
Partnership in practice
- AngloAmerican use open innovation forums to learn from world-class experts and collaborators in other industries, working together to interrogate the major challenges faced in their business – and ideate potential solutions.
Open Innovation platforms
Businesses have created online platforms to search for innovative businesses to help solve defined challenges.
To find out more about open innovation in the CBI's mini-guide.
Partnership in practice
- BT’s Green Tech Innovation Platform (GTIP), created in partnership with Plug and Play, uses an open innovation approach to identify start-ups and scale-ups to take forward to proof of concept and accelerate commercialisation. These are identified around the specific challenge areas BT are trying to solve: smart streets, smart buildings and remote diagnostics.
Supply chain
Businesses collaborate with partners within their supply chain, specifically to tackle scope three emissions which must be addressed as part of net zero commitments.
Partnership in practice
- Costain run a supply chain academy which supports sustainability within the construction industry through cross-sector training
- Compass Group work closely with dairy farmers to reduce emissions related to milk production. They also recognise that in many cases, the emissions from individuals just going about their lives, can be greater than emissions from business activity. In this case Compass are working to encourage and instill greener behaviours such as in the food people consume
- TATA Steel is working with their paint suppliers to remove solvent from their paints. If successful they can massively reduce their carbon footprint.
Customers or clients, across public and private sectors
Businesses that deliver innovative solutions to sustainability challenges partner with customers and clients to support specific decarbonisation needs.
Partnership in practice
- Antalis deliver low carbon and environmentally friendly paper and packaging solutions. They work with clients to develop bespoke low carbon solutions to their specific packaging challenges
- OnGen work with clients who use their products to make the business case for renewables. In some cases, they license their software to clients in both the private and public sector.
Consultants
Businesses work in partnership with consultants to measure and understand their firm’s carbon footprint, and develop strategies to reduce it.
Partnership in practice
- TLT worked with Carbon Intelligence to formalise a net zero roadmap based on science-based targets
- Compass Group worked with South Pole to measure food related emissions at Compass’ net zero commitment launch event to help inform their decarbonisation efforts moving forward.
