What To Do With Surplus in a Social Business?
Words create worlds. That's why definitions are so important. Spending time on defining terms with precision, then selecting a word family to shape your culture, and as a result its tone, character and direction is a powerful and sometimes frustrating exercise. Such is life and work in a knowledge economy.
We recently spent time storying how social business is being defined by those leading and thinking about social businesses. A key premise of social business is sustainability. That sustainability is brought about by the application of business practices to serving a market: finding a customer who is willing to pay for the social value added through social business activity. A result of this activity is a profit, or a surplus. That there must be a surplus, or at least a non-loss, has the agreement of everyone we interviewed on the subject. What to do with that surplus is really the only point of difference. And even on this point it is more a debate on the mechanisms for allocating that surplus than the purpose of allocating it. Read More |
