Collaborate to simplify, compete to differentiate: playbook for cross-industry collaboration

As the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s 2030 Plastics Agenda makes clear, businesses face systemic barriers they cannot overcome alone in the redesign of the packaging system (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2025).  Infrastructure gaps, regulatory requirements, and the question of how to innovate under cost pressures are shared problems. The companies making the most progress are those investing in pre-competitive collaboration to solve them collectively.

But collaboration on the backend doesn’t mean homogeneity at the shelf. The challenge is knowing where to pool resources and where to compete – to keep the consumer experience diverse, engaging and brand-led while the system underneath gets simpler and more circular. This session explores what effective cross-industry collaboration looks like in practice, and how to engage without losing competitive edge.

• Where collaboration creates value: Standardising materials, pooling data, aligning on infrastructure investment — which areas of the packaging system genuinely benefit from a pre-competitive approach, and how do businesses structure those partnerships without running into commercial or legal roadblocks?
• Keeping the consumer experience alive: As value chains collaborate to simplify backend systems, how do brands ensure the consumer-facing experience stays differentiated, innovative and engaging, rather than converging toward a lowest-common-denominator solution?
• From working groups to real-world outcomes: Cross-industry initiatives are only as good as what they deliver. What separates the collaborations that drive systemic change from the ones that produce reports?