Collaborative Advantage

'Collaborative Advantage offers the perfect recipe for successful businesses that improve lives' -- Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, co-founders of Ben and Jerry's

'A valuable contribution to the vital task of getting people to see the business world as a complex, interconnected ecosystem, rather than as a sharp-elbowed race to the bottom' -- Rory Sutherland, Vice-chairman of Ogilvy Group UK, and the Spectator's 'Wiki Man'.

Strategic consultant and social entrepreneur Paul Skinner argues that we have now reached a turning point in history from which creating Competitive Advantage may no longer be in the best interests of an organization.

He presents today's business and social challenges through a new strategic lens and offers this book as a practical guide to help you create Collaborative Advantage, transform your business and change the world.

You will gain access to world-leading techniques to enable you to:

· Mobilize staff, partners, collaborators and customers around a common purpose that gets everyone you need firmly on your side.
· Foster improved innovation, reach more customers or beneficiaries, build greater loyalty, generate greater income and forge more ambitious partnerships.
· De-couple your potential for growth from the level of resource your organization controls.

This is an indispensable guide that will help you transform the growth of your business or the impact of your non-profit by bringing the fuller value-creating potential of the outside world inside your organization.

The history of business strategy has been built on the idea that businesses must compete to win. But what if the competitive model of business is now broken? In today's interconnected world, could strategies to create competitive advantage actually be holding your business back?

Strategic consultant and social entrepreneur Paul Skinner presents the alternative model of Collaborative Advantage that you can use to drive a greater level of success that is better for you, better for your customers, and better for society.

Create Collaborative Advantage to:

· Achieve greater results with fewer resources.
· Mobilise staff, customers, partners and stakeholders around a common purpose that engages the support of everyone you need.
· Nurture innovation; reach more customers or beneficiaries; build greater loyalty; generate higher income; and forge more ambitious partnerships.

This is an indispensible guide that will help you to rapidly accelerate the growth of your business or the impact of your non-profit organisation by bringing the fuller, value-creating potential of the outside world inside your organisation.



'A valuable contribution to the vital task of getting people to see the business world as a complex, interconnected ecosystem rather than as a sharp-elbowed race to the bottom.'

Rory Sutherland
Vice-Chairman of Ogilvy Group UK and The Spectator's Wiki Man


'A refreshing and optimistic take on the opportunities Collaborative Advantage can open up for business. Paul Skinner speaks from experience .... and it shows.'

Paul George
Senior Partner and Head of International Development, PwC


'This is a profound provocation as to the imperative of a collaborative mindset in an ever more volatile world. Paul has defined a model, and brought it to life with a wide variety of helpful examples, making it applicable to almost any challenge a business or brand might face.'

Mark Evans
Chief Marketing Officer, Direct Line Group

Conventional competition-based approaches to strategy no longer work and can actively prevent an organization from achieving its goals. This book proposes an alternative model, that of Collaborative Advantage, to drive a greater level of success that is better for you, better for your customers and better for society.Critics of communism often remark that the system, though wonderful in theory, was fatally incompatible with human nature. But the same criticism could be levelled perfectly well at the many current assumptions of modern capitalism. What makes us human is not that we compete - anything can do that: as this book explains, our real difference lies in our near miraculous powers of collaboration. Collaborative Advantage offers the perfect recipe for successful businesses that improve livesTruly paradigm-shifting books are rare, but Paul's argument seems to me both revolutionary and inevitableA powerful approach for ambitious and brave leaders. This book will undoubtedly enable you to overcome big challenges and encourage you to make the changes you want to seeAn absorbing book . . . well worth a readOur world is more connected than ever before, so let us ensure that we open our eyes to the world of possibilities and invite others to join us on our journey through effective collaboration. Paul Skinner's book, Collaborative Advantage, is a very useful and practical contribution to that perspectiveA practical guide to a strategy . . . more sensitive to your teams, clients and the worldA new day dawns for the world's economic system - and the collaborative model might suit it bestUse this book from the pioneer of Collaborative Advantage to grow your business exponentially and make competition for losersWe live in a world where collaboration and collaborative culture are key to unlocking future success. In this work Paul Skinner has set out a highly precious set of gems for anyone tackling a complex task. Whether in business, not-for-profit or social environments, this is a must-readThe new business formula in a world of open innovation and creativity is about getting on and not just getting ahead. Co-operation is no longer a niche. It is a core competence. This book by Paul Skinner, the great advocate of Collaborative Advantage, is a handbook for success in this new commercial world