What is "precompetitive innovation"?

Our Foresight Studio students in the SFI program have asked what we mean by "pre-competitive purposes"? 

Pre-competitive purposes / innovation / research / collaboration refers to early stage, multi-sector, “market development” efforts that aim to open up space and capacity for cooperation & competition by developing knowledge, expectations, standards. 

Details from the literature: 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK210028/ (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. 
Altshuler examined about 50 of these collaborations and classified them as to whether they have open or restricted participation and open or restricted outputs. They also vary according to their goals. Altshuler identified two broad collaboration goals: to build enabling platforms and to conduct research. These goals can be further subdivided by the four different types of outputs they produce, including

• Development of standards and tools;
• Generation and aggregation of data;
• Knowledge creation; and
• Product development.

….
The online encyclopedia Wikipedia is an example of a collaboration in which there are both open participation and open access to outputs. In contrast, with collaborative agreements between companies, such as the Merck–AstraZeneca collaboration to jointly develop a treatment from which only they will profit, there is highly restricted access to both participation and outputs.

https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/ce100/the-programme/research-and-insights (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.  
The Circular Economy 100 is a pre-competitive innovation programme established to enable organisations to develop new opportunities and realise their circular economy ambitions faster. It brings together corporates, governments and cities, academic institutions, emerging innovators and affiliates in a unique multi-stakeholder platform. Specially developed programme elements help members learn, build capacity, network, and collaborate with key organisations around the circular economy.