If the crypto projects were working in collaboration more often, then the whole crypto community would achieve bigger accomplishments all at once!
Synergy would be on the side of cryptos if that were the case, we see these days many projects working on their own each of them having as result longer periods of releasing updates and new features.
It is time to find ideas and bring teams together and work smart rather than hard. With collaboration among team projects like Lightning network, bitcoin smart contracts, ETH scalability, and many features could be ready for the masses sooner and the global economy would have a big positive impact!
I think you are making one big assumption, it seems you think the majority of the projects are trying to move the market of cryptocurrencies forward and I do not see it that way, most projects in the market have only one goal and that is to advance the interest of the developers, they are not interested in collaborating with anyone or to create a coin that will actually work and bring something to the community, under those conditions then most developers are not really interested in working for a common goal.
The rest of the developers that care about their coins and the community do not really need to work together, as soon as one team of developers have a good idea the rest could always take inspiration on it and then implement that idea in their coin.