By: Mike Chitty

Mike Chitty — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 10:47:17 +0000

Can anyone show me a business that is NOT ’social’?
One that pays no-ones wages that provides no-one with identity and respect?
That meets no customer needs?
That creates nothing that is valued by anyone?
One that does nothing socially useful with any of its profits?
How can ‘credible business ideas’ not have an evident social return (create wealth, employment etc)? If they are going to screw up people and the planet then they are NOT credible!
It is nothing to do with legal structures, where profits go or being part of a ’social enteprise movement’. It is part of being a human being and being enterprising. How many billions was it that Gates popped into the Gates foundation? Rowntree, Kauffman, Carnegie, Ziff, Ford, Getty, Mellon, Packard, Wellcome, …
There is just ‘good’ business – ‘bad’ business and an awful lot of stuff somewhere in between.
Some businesses, and the social entrepreneurs behind them (there are no entrepreneurs who are not ’social’) start out ‘bad’ unsustainable, polluting, exploitative etc and become ‘good’.
Some that start out ‘good’ get trapped in never ending battles for survival and become little more than ‘miserable grant writers’.
And there is a whole lot of subjectivity in making the distinctions between good business and bad business.
There are lots of us who have set up ‘for profit’ businesses as the simplest and easiest way to drive forward our social missions – which we hold just as passionately as our ’social enteprise/not for profit distribution’ colleagues and get mightily chessed off at being not considered part of ‘the movement’.
Once we start to recognise that ENTERPRISE is a tremendous driving force for innovation and change; good and bad; not only in the the economy but also in societal and global development, and stop pretending that officially sanctioned, card carrying members of the ’social enteprise movement’ have a monopoly on ‘good’ we might start to get some traction on developing enterprise as a tool for progress.

Comments on: Social Business. An Antidote.

By: Mike Chitty