The following is an excerpt from Simon Mainwaring's new book We First: How Brands and Consumers Use Social Media to Build a Better World , which aims to help brands, marketers, non-profits and socially-conscious citizens use the latest social media, mobile and gaming platforms to build communities, profits and positive impact.

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. This is not to say that brands should not compete for business or seek to attract the largest number of customers. But when a larger goal can be established, companies can benefit from working together to breed innovation and arrive at the most effective solutions. The corporate world is full of intellectual property and research departments that remain unnecessarily proprietary when they could be helping each other solve problems. Read complete article.