Make the customer the hero of your brand's story.

Creating a better world requires teamwork, partnerships, and collaboration, as we need an entire army of companies to work together to build a better world within the next few decades. This means corporations must embrace the benefits of cooperating with one another.

If a brand genuinely wants to make a social contribution, it should start with who they are, not what they do. For only when a brand has defined itself and its core values can it identify causes or social responsibility initiatives that are in alignment with its authentic brand story.

Corporations often partner with government after natural disasters, as many companies did in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. As a rule, however, long-term civic/corporate partnerships are still rare .But this need not remain the status quo, as many opportunities are available for such partnerships.

Let's hope brands recognize that the true power of this technology is not its reach but its ability to communicate substance that adds meaning to our lives. Otherwise, brands will be investing in technology that consumers simply won't buy.

When thinking through who to bring together to generate new ideas, it is more effective to combine specialists from very different and unrelated disciplines rather than a variety of people with different skills sets in the same field.

Work with your competitors when the interest of the community and planet are at stake.