Unilever has teamed up with several industry partners to create an open platform to encourage businesses, governments, academics and NGOs to work together to meet sustainability and global development challenges, according to a report published by Research Live.

Paragon, as the platform has been named, will launch this spring. Partners include PepsiCo, CocaCola, Kantar, Nielsen, MetrixLab, GfK, Flamingo, Save the Children and Esomar.

“The past year has set the precedent with highly ambitious goals and frameworks created to address global sustainability and development challenges that we all face,” Stan Sthanunathan, Senior Vice President, Consumer & Market Insights, Unilever told Research Live. “It is time to accelerate efforts to move towards achieving these goals and Paragon will allow us to share learning, data and insight, and encourages other businesses and industries to address these critical challenges affecting us all.

“By building a network of partners and working together, we can look for solutions which have greater scale and impact globally to address development and societal challenges.”