Just share it - top brands usher in era of green "co-opetition"

The era of ferocious competition between rival companies could be coming to an end, or at least when it comes to developing greener products and services.

That is the view of a group of 10 high-profile brands, including Nike, Best Buy, Yahoo! and Salesforce.com, which last week launched a new initiative designed to share patents that could help firms limit their environmental impact.

Mirroring the technology industry's Eco-Patent Commons, the new GreenXchange was launched at last week's World Economic Forum in Davos with a view to encouraging consumer brands to freely share their intellectual property (IP) through a new web-based marketplace.

Sportswear giant Nike underlined its commitment to the new initiative, making more than 400 new patents available through the exchange.

The company said that its patent for Environmentally Preferred Rubber, which uses 96 per cent fewer toxins than its original design, could have an impact on the wider shoe industry, making it easier for other firms to use the patented design and switch to more sustainable rubber.

"Increasingly it makes good business sense for companies to share some of their intellectual property," said Don Tapscott, co-author of Wikinomics and chairman of software company nGenera Insight. "The GreenXchange is the new commons, and by applying open innovation to sustainability, it will contribute not just to the health and well-being of our planet, but also to the cost control and competitiveness of its member companies."

Speaking to BusinessGreen.com, Hannah Jones, vice president for sustainable business and innovation, said firms were increasingly willing to share their IP to tackle environmental problems and predicted that the GreenXchange would expand as more organisations sign up.

"We need to move very fast from decoupling consumption from the consumption of raw resources, and there are huge amounts of duplication going on that businesses increasingly understand they can address through collaboration," she said.

She said that this so-called "co-opetition" had been inspired by the open standards and collaboration that underpinned the development of the internet and sparked the web revolution.

It will inevitably take time for businesses to agree to share their IP, but Jones insisted there was a growing realisation that the pace at which firms need to move towards more sustainable business models means they do not have time to be precious about green developments that have little or no impact on their competitiveness.

"I recently met with one of my competitors and it turned out they had been doing much the same work as us to reduce the amount of packaging with their shoes," she said. "We agreed that type of duplication does not help either firm. "