Social purpose is business critical

The “Social Business” journal has recently reported on the rise of social purpose driven business models.  This is where business institutions recognise their shared humanity and a role in wider society.  It reports that in designing and creating solutions that address education, sustainability, poverty etc, businesses have found that they can also reap rewards in terms of profits, knowledge or talent.  Social value and economic value can go hand in hand. 

This is backed up by the rise in “social intrapreneurship”where a person in a large organisations takes the direct initiative for innovation which addresses social and environmental issues.  The Doughty Centre at Cranfield University has summarised the necessary internal environment or “ecosytstem” to foster social innovation using the acronym DARE which stands for:

• Dialogue
• Autonomy
• Risk taking
• Experimentation 

These elements are seen as being key to attracting top talent and to sustainability in business.  Basically business needs to understand that social and environmental impacts are business critical.