The Need For a New Way of Organizing Public-Private Co-Creation: An Evidence Base

In the first blog of this series, we explored how the seeds of a new era of public-private co-creation have started to emerge, with examples of the public and private sector working together to problem solve, innovate and deliver for whole-of-society transformation. But also, that to scale these emerging forms of public-private co-creation, we must purposefully build a new form of collaborative architecture.

Recent reports of the G20’s Taskforce on a Global Mobilization against Climate Change (TF-CLIMA) and the United Kingdom’s Transition Finance Market Review, have been reiterated the importance of collaboration and more effective national architecture to bring together government, business, finance and civil society to deliver the transition.

Currently, there is a lack of analysis on the most effective models and approaches to make this work. This year, the Policy, Advocacy and Member Mobilization team at WBCSD has been working with BRAE to explore the conditions and roles that are critical to enabling public-private co-creation at the national level. Our process began with a rigorous discovery period to deepen our understanding of successes and failures in public-private collaborations. We have spoken to more than 60 leading practitioners based on six continents through one-to-one interviews and group dialogues.

We cast our net widely, engaging investors, business leaders, innovators, civil servants, consultants, researchers, funders, development banks and programme managers, both within sustainability but also in settings including healthcare, technology, infrastructure and international development. We spoke with them to learn about their experiences in public-private collaborations and the key factors for success and failure. In addition, we carried out an extensive literature review and identified over 30 case studies.

We have heard that more effective and structured public-private co-creation is critical to address complex and urgent sustainability challenges, with four distinct characteristics emerging as critical for success: it should connect corporate and national transition planning ecosystems, it should be facilitated by a dedicated intermediary, it should be safeguarded from political and financial turbulence, and it should be agile enough to adapt to local contexts.

Connecting corporate and national transition planning ecosystems

Our research points clearly to the need for normative architecture for public-private co-creation that connects corporate and national transition planning ecosystems. Corporate transition planning is taking hold, encouraged by both regulators and investors, and supported by new frameworks and guidance such as those by the Transition Plan Taskforce in the United Kingdom. Meanwhile, calls are growing louder for governments to take the opportunity of the next round of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) in 2025 to raise their ambition and develop investible national action plans.

Some countries are already moving in this direction, establishing the building blocks for strategic and investible national climate plans. Examples include Japan’s sector pathways and New Zealand External Reporting Board’s sector-level scenario analysis convening. Elsewhere, country platforms are emerging, including the recently launched Climate & Ecological Transformation Investment Platform in Brazil. National transition plans have the potential to translate NDCs and Long-Term Strategies into robust sector-level plans and policies, aligning national and corporate plans and accelerating the whole-of-economy transition. 

However, we heard that many critical functions to connect corporate and national transition planning ecosystems are missing. Structural aspects such as reporting frameworks, technology roadmaps, and even investment platforms are emerging, but need to become more mainstream. But underlying components that lead to positive shifts — such as shared networks, problem solving, strategy, and dealmaking — are scarce.

These components behave as ‘connective tissue’ to align the public and private sectors on missions and unleash the power of different actors. They are fundamental and often underappreciated elements of a well-functioning complex system. Without them, opportunities for joint problem-solving and shared access to innovation, knowledge, and finance will be missed.

Dedicated intermediaries can accelerate collaboration

Our research highlights that government engagement is essential for the success of public-private collaborations, but that in many cases, establishing a dedicated intermediary helps to manage vested interests from all sides and maintain collective focus and momentum on achieving shared outcomes.

A dedicated intermediary can work closely with the government to engage and convene different stakeholder groups, including business and finance, providing a neutral space for problem-solving. However, government backing is critical to securing a high-level political mandate that will guide the collaboration, such as an economy-wide or sector-specific decarbonization target(s), or creating the enabling conditions for investment.

As an example, the Danish Climate Partnerships was initiated by the Government of Denmark, but it is administered by non-governmental organization, State of Green. This is an apolitical platform that convenes and works together with different government ministries, corporates and financial institutions in Denmark, increasing transparency and information flow between the different stakeholder groups.

In five years, the 14 different public-private partnerships have developed over 400 policy recommendations, coupled with action priorities for business and finance, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Denmark by 70 per cent by 2030 and accelerate the country’s transition to a sustainable, low-carbon, resource efficient society.  A number of the policy recommendations developed by the partnerships are now being drafted as legislation in the Danish Parliament.

Safeguarded from political and finance turbulence

Many of the practitioners we engaged during the discovery period were keen to underline that public-private co-creation is most effective when safeguarded from political, financial and organizational turbulence. Short-term political and budgetary cycles can create turbulence and often undermine collaborative efforts, or threaten the very existence of the efforts themselves.

This is particularly important when actors are committing large sums of capital to transition investments – i.e. those with long-term outcomes. In these instances, confidence is critical. It is easily undermined by a lack of policy and budget certainty, and diverging priorities.

As an example, Fossil Free Sweden is a government-initiated public-private program to develop industry-led roadmaps, with the goal of making Sweden one of the first fossil-free nations in the world. Since 2015, the program has been coordinated by a national office headed by a national coordinator. The national coordinator is responsible for facilitating dialogues between businesses across 22 sectors with the government.

This established mechanism has ensured that the collaboration has remained safeguarded from political turbulence, most notably, in the aftermath of the 2022 Swedish election, when the political party that set-up Fossil Free Sweden lost power.

Adapted to local contexts

Across the world, different countries have different priorities, transition pathways, economic contexts and political economies. These varying conditions necessitate different approaches to public-private collaboration, depending on the local context. This means that having a deep understanding of local context and extensive networks within countries is essential for effective public-private co-creation.

Clearly there is no one-size fits all solution. Underpinning this new form of collaborative architecture must be a set of processes and tools that can be applied and adapted to local settings as needed.   

Normative architecture is needed to enable action

Throughout the discovery process we summarised vast amounts of research and information about different forms of public-private co-creation. However, research and analysis do not equal action. In interviews, we heard repeatedly that even organisations with a deep data-driven understanding of context and need (e.g. development banks, UN agencies) often don’t have the capacity and aren’t equipped to act.

It is now widely accepted that meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement will require fundamental transformation across the economy. But this won’t happen at the scale and pace required without a well-directed whole-of-system response. We need urgently to bring government, business, finance and society together. And we need to do so, guided by a clear national strategic ambition, and supported by structured arrangements for trusted, inclusive, locally tailored and mission-oriented collaboration and co-creation.

Mark Manning, Visiting Senior Fellow, Centre for Economic Transition Expertise, Grantham Research Institute, London School of Economics and Political Science and Co-Chair, Disclosure Framework Workstream, Transition Plan Taskforce (UK). 

We need to move rapidly into action to address the world’s complex sustainability challenges. To do this, we need to purposefully build new collaborative architecture that enables business, government, finance and civil society to work together on the shared missions that will enable co-investment to accelerate the transition. Our research shows that this architecture must be underpinned by a set of competencies and tools, applied by facilitators, strategists, designers and dealmakers.

In the next blog of this series, we will share our emerging thinking about the design of this new collaborative architecture and how it could work to support governments, companies, financial institutions and civil society groups to work together to deliver solutions that overcome some of the largest barriers preventing the sustainable transition this decade.