Great innovation doesn’t happen in isolation. The right partnerships can take breakthrough technology further and help shape what comes next for an entire industry.

Mary Barra, Chair and CEO of General Motors, once said, “Of course we’re going to compete, but in a lot of spaces now, in many industries, you compete and you partner.”

This captures an important shift in leadership. From automotive and AI to healthcare, energy, food and biotech, companies are developing technologies that can transform established industries. But creating the breakthrough is only one part of the challenge. The next is bringing it into a world where decades of expertise, infrastructure and relationships already exist.

At Celleste Bio, we are living that journey. We have developed a new way to produce REAL cocoa ingredients using cell-culture technology, including chocolate-grade cocoa butter that we have already used to create milk chocolate. We are bringing a new capability into an industry with tremendous expertise and knowledge of its own.

I’ve learned that breakthrough technology and collaboration are not opposites. You can be deeply confident in what your company has built while recognizing that the right partnerships can help take it further. For me, knowing how and when to collaborate has become an important part of leadership.

A good partnership starts with clarity about what makes your company exceptional. Your core technology, intellectual property and competitive advantage need to remain clearly yours. You need to know where your company must lead and continue investing in those capabilities. But being exceptional at your core doesn’t mean every capability around your innovation needs to be built inside your organization.

Source link