In another life I use Twitter to gather information that helps me turn my mortgage hamster wheel and this includes me "following" a bunch of talented techie "do gooders" (since when was doing good bad?) who's understanding of the the social media diaspora is enlightening and at times bewildering to a luddite like me.
There are many emergent models of how business can be done outside established mechanisms, using 2.0 and beyond to gracefully and skillfully connect a need and potentially balancing supply.
Such a model is personified by a woman called Katherine Robinson who has a most unlikely role recruiting management personnel for emerging business in clean technology.
Fundamentally she uses social media search, bookmarking, tweets and more to un-earth business talent who can profitably contribute to the fast emerging alternative energy sector.
In said day job I use similar (doubtless less effectively) for far less good, but am aware of how much an understanding of this space can connect and identify people around common interests & needs.
Using these skills to seek out potential advocates around "good" mainstream brands will help move a pro-brand activist agenda forwards, supporting the brilliant work she and her recruitment "spots" for US based recruitment consultants EcoSearch do in modernising the energy industry worldwide.
I'm sure that the good folk of EcoSearch would have an environmental perspective to the way they run their business. I'd also love to think that EcoSearch parent company MRINetwork is a business I could whole-heartedly advocate as part of a Pro-brand & business agenda. Doubtless they have impeccable recruitment skills but are they more ethical and environmental in their outlook than any of it's visionary global search recruitment agency competitors? Where I in the market for their services it's a question I would ask of them.
Obviously this is all hypothetical as I have no site of whether they use green energy in their office, whether they recycle or have an ethically invested pension scheme or indeed encourage cycling to work through tax incentives etc and much more.
It does however slightly circuitously illustrate a point, that where I to be a consumer of their services I would like to have an understanding of their stance on all of the above as a point of differentiation from their competitors.
Like buying organic or fairtrade where I have the right to politicise my purchasing of "good business" making good profit over "normal business" making normal profit, I would like the option to choose the same from all businesses, including them and the people who make tablecloth's and door handles and wall paint and radiators and glasses cases (some of the things I see sitting here at my kitchen table).
I feel confident that a talented and environmentally savvy social media sourceress like Katherine would feel even more engaged with her work if she knew that who she was ultimately working for shared all her values and walked the walk on green energy. Maybe they do but I don't know that when I read their corporate "who is" and I should.
We need a campaign for transparency in business ethics and environmental best practice in western economies that would slap an energy and ethics rating on every business and product consumed. It could be audited from each businesses accounts and reveal where the heads of those business are pointing. Nihilistic pursuit of "greed is good", or responsible and social profit for them, that benefits us all, or maybe somehwre in between. Technology can solve immense challenges and if the data is there and available (Companies House in the UK) surely it just needs to be processed, managed and published.
Without that key information, I am living in a free market economy without my full rights as a consumer, to choose who makes a product or who offers a service more ethically or environmentally than another provider in the same sector. This information would help me make another choice ... and choice is what capitalism is all about, is it not?
Rampant free market capitalism plainly isn't working for the world, it's citizens or our collective futures, and I have never been convinced that it delivers anything other than our mutually assured destruction if unchecked and moderated. Yet I want choices and products that innovate and improve. Products that look great and are functional, that capture the human spirit for invention and entrepreneurialism and capitalism has done that brilliantly to date, but at a terrible cost. But the emergence of green and ethical shopping channels like the fabulous Tree Hugger is evidence that many people feel the same way.
I want to choose which one of the products I buy or services I purchase carries the greenest or most ethical stamp on the box so I can add that to my list of choices. It's my right as a consumer... right?
But we are all blind to the vast majority of those choices.
"Good" business should voluntarily introduce an energy rating to all aspects of their businesses, products and services, so that I know who makes great stuff the best way.
That way, people like me could support their businesses, use word of mouth networks to influence and inform others and positively pressure "bad" business to change and improve their environmental and ethical operating criteria or lose market share and profit to more engaged competitors.
Personally, this is something I do anyway, with the relatively limited knowledge I have. I don't expect to get paid or rewarded for it, but I have no problem spending some of my day campaigning in small ways to support "good" business. If we all had the same mindset to communicate why we chose X product over Y, or bank with A instead of B, using the myriad of social media at our disposal it would make a difference, and I believe it would quickly.
Nobody can doubt that the difference between Barak Obama being elected and not was his deeply engaged and brilliantly guided use of social media and the same potential exists for us all to take control of business for change using the same 2.0 channels.
Until we have a political and economic revolution this is the best and quickest way we can all bring about change.
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