A Good read: Who Cares Wins
‘Social media is forcing businesses, politicians and leaders to be more socially responsible’. This is what David Jones, CEO of global communications agency Havas and Founder of One Young World is arguing in his latest book Who Cares Wins. Here’s what we thought…
The book maps several important radical shifts happening at the moment as a result of social media: increased transparency, the rise of the ‘prosumer’ and a new generation of social entrepreneurs putting Good at the core of their businesses. Social media is not only changing the way we do business, but it is also changing the way we build relationships with each other. The most forward-thinking companies are engaging consumers in ‘collaborative production’ and we’re even getting together to purchase collaboratively e.g. groupon or cut out the corporation all together (think ebay, Freecycle etc…).
Jones believes the most successful businesses in the future will be the ones who intersect the social media and social responsibility spaces – an idea which he calls The Social Business. It’s about finding the overlap between what the company is good at and want Good consumers want.
An interesting read, Jones usefully explains the cultural, generational and technological shifts that we need to harness in order to make Good happen. Interestingly, he notes that the largest barrier to realising Good at the moment relates to the evolution of the investment and shareholder communities. They’re not embracing social responsibility as quickly as we need them to and they’re still focused more on the size of short-term profits than sustainability. Nevertheless, Jones believes that once we get better at quantifying the financial benefits of social responsibility, this could become less of a problem.
So, whilst we agree that social media is making waves as a force for Good (we love it!), we’ve got some more fundamental changes to make that could turn out to be more pivotal.
Have you read this book? Tell us what you think @AGoodWeek or leave a comment at the end of this blog post!
Image courtesy of Wall Street Journal online