With all the pressure that insurers and other companies face now to innovate, it turns out that going it alone may be an outdated practice. Collaborations between new and veteran players are more productive and successful, two McKinsey experts assert in a new Harvard Business Review blog posting.

“Going it alone, we believe, is simply not the way to go at all,” Chanda Gnanasambandam, senior partner and leader of McKinsey & Company’s global Growth Tech practice, and Michael Uhl, a partner and leader of corporate venturing for the firm’s Growth Tech practice, write in their July 20 HBR posting.

“Collaboration is the essential new secret sauce for startups and industry leaders alike,” the Silicon Valley-based pair write. “For true disruption to take hold, old and new must work together, playing to each other’s strengths.”

The duo criticize corporate venturing as largely “fragment and ad hoc,” and say pilot projects with startups and corporate leaders move too slow. But based on their work with big company CEOs, startup founders and venture capitalists, the pair say that collaboration works better, rather than seeking innovation through building a startup from scratch or acquiring a company that fulfills an innovation wish list.

Collaboration matters more in the quest for innovation because it is “a real exchange of ideas and means, and the vision to achieve distinct goals,” they say.

This can take a variety of shapes, the article notes, where corporations bring assets, scale and knowledge, startups offer new technological knowhow and venture capitalists bring on funding and new talent.

“To revolutionize old industries, small and big companies alike must get past competitive angst and embrace their strengths and weaknesses,” they note.

For the full blog posting, click here.