This document discusses trends in cross-border cooperation and how it creates new business opportunities. It provides several examples of companies collaborating, including pharmaceutical companies Sanofi and Merck working together on cancer research, and automakers PSA Peugeot and Toyota developing small city cars together. Experts interviewed believe cooperation allows for sharing of resources, risks, and rewards, but also note it can be difficult to establish cooperation across organizational boundaries. They predict future cooperation may increasingly involve artificial intelligence agents that can collaborate to achieve goals without human biases.

1. Trends
Cooperation
Thereisacleartrend–cross-border
cooperationcreatesnewbusiness
opportunities.Thechallengeisto
communicateandagree.Andthe
futuremaylieinartificialintelligence
whenpeoplearen’tenough.
TEXT JAKOB LUNDBERG AND MARCUS OLSSON
EVERYONE
GAINS
24 FUTURE BY SEMCON

2. FROM
COOPERATION
FUTURE BY SEMCON 25

3. “EVERYONE HAS THE
SAME INFORMATION
AT THE SAME TIME
AND EVERYONE IS
WORKING TOWARDS
GETTING THE CITY TO
WORK EFFICIENTLY.”
ROHIT TALWAR
HINGS ARE run­
ning smoothly in
Rio de Janeiro. Po­
lice and ambulanc­
es arrive quickly
when something
happens. Engi­
neers arrive quick­
ly when a broken
traffic light needs
fixing. Sewer system blockages can cause
nasty flooding unless preventative meas­
ures 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 mon­
itoring 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 pri­
vate 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 succeed­
ed 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 every­
one is working towards getting the city to
work efficiently,” says Rohit Talwar.
He works as a global futurist and runs
the London-based 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 deep-rooted challenges when differ­
ent 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 vari­
ous parts of our own organizations. How
do we make use of an idea at one end,
T
This 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.
26 FUTURE BY SEMCON

4. 1RESEARCH 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.
2JOINT 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.
3OPEN INNOVATION
Wikipedia, 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.
4SHARING KNOWLEDGE
South-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.
5CUSTOMER-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.
6SHARING 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
7
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
Talwar
Lives 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.
FUTURE BY SEMCON 27

5. 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 busi­
nesses at various levels. And despite com­
petition being tougher than ever it seems
as though more companies are choosing a
softer approach to collaboration. The val­
ue 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 medio­
cre 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 complete­
ly altered financial services. In this field
the players are pioneers and need to work
closely with one another because their in­
novation 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, Glaxo­
SmithKline,” says Rohit. He believes
that common sharing models for taking
risks and reward is another area that
PHOTOPONTUSTIDEMAN
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
Ekström
Lives in: Lund,
Sweden.
Profession: Journalist,
author and lecturer.
Andreas wrote a book
called “The Google
Code”, neutrally
explaining how
Google reasons and
thinks.
28 FUTURE BY SEMCON

6. 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 ‘pre-competitive
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 some­
thing that will benefit ordinary people,
and which companies can then try and
commercialize.”
Andreas Ekström says that collabora­
tion models are being refined. Signif­
icant 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 will­
ingness to help one another. Human
interaction will have a more minor role
in future. Goodwill between individu­
als might go a long way but not always
enough. When Rohit talks about the
future’s most ground-breaking collabora­
tion 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 pro­
grammes instructed to perform specific
tasks, and make their own decisions based
on what collaboration partners are re­
quired 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 Stroud
Lives in: Salisbury, England
Occupation: 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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