What is Social Business?

Social Business is a business that aims to be commercial in order to be self sustaining, and judges its success by the amount of value that is created for society as a whole.

This idea is not new, but it was given a new prominence in a book by Mohammad Yunus called "Creating a World Without Poverty - Social Business and the Future of Capitalism" published in December 2007.

Tr-Ac-Net argues something different from Mohammad Yunus, but not incompatible. In the Yunus thesis there is a need for social business in order to fill a big gap in the prevailing market driven capitalist model, and with this Tr-Ac-Net is in agreement.

But Tr-Ac-Net considers the prevailing techniques for the analysis of business are in need of drastic reform. The value of a business is almost solely driven by the present profit and the potential for future profit, completely ignoring the impact of the business on the commons and society as a whole. In due course it is expected that consumers will pay more attention to these matters, and in time this will impact sales and profits. Tr-Ac-Net argues that these changes will come about when there is more systemic measurement of impact on the commons and on society ... and that this system of measurement needs to be a strong track in parallel with social business.

More on this as the blog matures.

Sincerely

Peter Burgess
The Tr-Ac-Net Organization