The evidence for our collaborative future...

Today while undertaking a 7 hour round trip drive, to drop my Dad and Brother off in a country town, I stumbled across an inspiring BBC interview of a Harvard business professor. The interviewee was Professor Michael Porter and he presented the concept that for businesses to be successful (or profitable) in the future, they must create social value. But this social value creation, does not come at a trade off to economic value creation or overall business profitability.

This interview was personally valuable, as I have been pondering lately the question of ‘the business case for doing good’ and for the life of me, I cant distinguish it, but mainly because I can not seperate doing good and business. If you are to build a sustainable business, from an environmental, economic and social point of view, then your core business must be delivering some sort of social value, or ‘doing good’. And now, whilst I sit up in the early hours of a Sunday night / Monday morning (dont worry, its a public holiday Monday) – I have realised the abundance of material out there that should have made this scenario less of an awakening to me. So, below you’ll find a brain dump of links for your enjoyment!

The material covers:

• The psychology (and biology) of motivating and what motivates
• The evolution of our social construct
• Knowledge Management
• Shifting business from an economic focus to a social value focus (but not trading off)

The growing body of knowledge around the themes outlined above, as well as many side topics and others that I may have omitted, in addition to the GFC really has culminated in a social shift. Now, James Moody, of the CSIRO and author of the book ‘the sixth wave’ strongly presents the case that we are entering the wave of resource efficiency. I would argue that this is an over simplification and that what we are observing is a shift from a knowledge society, to that of a ‘wisdom society’ (similar to that described by Barry Schwartz (Practical Wisdom). Whist resource efficiency will definitely be an outcome of the transition we are observing, this will be as a result of the reinvigoration of the community; and the realisation of the next centuries business core value being social value and this not being at a trade off to economic value.

But what is social value?

Social value is the business activities output, its client service or product. It is also the well-being that is generates for its employees and its also the future financial security it guarantees its shareholders. And these are all very much interdependent. To guarantee the financial security of business shareholders, a company must be creating economic value whilst minimising its current and future liabilities. To do this into the future, will mean establishing the creation of social value as a companies core business as this ‘end’ will take a large step towards ensuring both of these objectives are established.

To deliver outstanding business outputs, we are now seeing through the likes of Google etc that employees autonomy, mastery and purpose must be fostered and valued. A result of this, is the growth in employee well being – but this, in my view, can be viewed from either angle. To foster societies entrepreneurial (or somewhat capitalistic) response to creating social value will require careful policy responses from governments, as well as a business recognition that the uptake of social media and the internet means that they are now more then ever more accountable to the consumer. I think that the social entrepreneurship so hurdle is covered as we have some inspiring names already appearing across Australia and the world.

So where does that leave you and I?

In an amazing place! Do not settle to work for the company where you did not feel like you are working purposefully. Now more then ever you should feel confident in either raising these concerns with your organisation, or leaving and finding another company of NGO where this purpose is satisfied. It will be people like you who will be the next generation of change agents, and will mould what the business, working and indeed natural environments are like for the rest of us!

If you have gone through an experience where you have either persuaded your company to change its core business, or simply motivated your company to realise that its core business really does have a more purposeful root – then please comment! We would love to hear your stories!

Many of you would have come across some of these resources already, but Prof Michael Porters BBC interview is a more recent one that I really recommend to you all...

See the TED.com talk here

Dan Pink – The surprising science of motivation

See the TED.com talk here

See articles here

See the TED.com talk here