First, we have the Circular Economy. Then we have the Sharing Economy and, upon my return from my last business trip to Antwerp (For #BLUG) and London (For the Melcrum Digital Summit), here we have got what I call a pretty cool, inspiring, thought-provoking, mind-blogging new initiative that takes the whole concept of sustainability and growth in a responsible manner into a new level. One where it’s proved that it can be done, where it needs to be done, if we would want to survive accordingly in the next few years, as a species. Welcome to The Co-Operative Ethical Plan 2012 – 2014 (and beyond)!

It was a couple of years back, perhaps even longer than that, when I first read from my dear good friend Rob Paterson about that noble, innovative movement of localising global businesses, essentially, referring to that perspective of how, more and more, we are going to experience how everything is going to be run locally, business wise, except perhaps for a handful of rather large corporations that seem to be well established in the global markets, and we are entering that phase where local businesses would strive not only for good, healthy growth, but also a sustainable one; one where they would live to support the growth of their local communities, which in return, would help local businesses become more profitable, in a much more open, transparent, collaborative and community-driven manner. And that can only be a good thing, seeing where the other way has taken us so far.

Well, I come back from those recent business trips, which I will be talking about shortly as well, not to worry, and lo and behold, I bumped into this absolutely delightful YouTube video clip, of just under three minutes, which describes what I would think Rob had in mind for that kind of localised sustainable and profitable business. The Co-Operative.

Checking out their web site’s Join the Revolution entry could not have had a better mantra to live by: “we launched our groundbreaking Ethical Plan with one clear goal: to be the most socially responsible business in the UK” [Emphasis mine] and it looks like they are aiming big because they are also planning on inspiring other people from all over the world. And I suspect they would succeed doing so, because while watching through the YouTube video it sounds like they are already well under way to make it happen. And I thought that, instead of me telling you all how they plan to make it work and provide us with a better, more sustainable, and socially responsible business world, I will leave it down to them to convince you of the rest, like they did with me, when I watched that clip. If not, judge for yourselves:

Truly inspiring, don’t you think? A couple of weeks back I put together one rather thought provoking blog entry under the controversial heading of “Why Social Business Keeps Failing to Deliver” and I guess, after having watched that video clip and the amazingly good commentary that sparked the post, that, to me, Social Business has now got a new mission. And a much more important one. Like I mentioned elsewhere, very soon I will be moving on away from the term Social Business (Leaving it for what it was meant to be all along in the first place!) and instead I will be using another concept I have grown to be very fond of to try to reflect what I mean with all of this social networking for business. But, for now, if open, trustworthy, public, transparent, agile, democratic, engaged, adaptive, empowered, interconnected, socially sustainable, etc. are what social businesses are all about, I guess The Co-Operative has just shown us all how it can be done. Successfully. And still while aiming for driving profit and growth. For everyone.

Yes, I guess you can call me a utopian, a true Hippie 2.0 of sorts, but can you imagine the corporate world behaving in the very same way? Can you imagine what social business would be like eventually? Let’s not imagine it then. Let’s make it happen! Let’s show and demonstrate what true, real, successful social businesses are all about. We have got nothing to lose, but a lot to gain… Our very own survival as a species… Welcome to Humanity 4.0!

Recent Blog Posts

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The Social Revolution – Remember Us Thu, May 23rd 2013 5:25p Luis Suarez We live in rather interesting, intriguing, complex, uncertain and wonderful times. We surely do. We live in times of extreme negatives juxtaposing themselves with extreme positives. We live in times where the Social Web has become that amplifier of (global / local) events, of our passions, of our emotions, of an unnerving polarisation of opinions and beliefs, where tolerance, compassion, empathy and caring, some times, all shine for their absence. Just like in the real world. Where did we leave [read] Keywords: google

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The Future of Work by 2020 Wed, May 22nd 2013 6:06a Luis Suarez Fascinating topic, don’t you think? And here we are, still in 2013, and already thinking about what the workplace of the future would be like by 2020. Well, one thing for sure is that it won’t be anything like we have today or what we may have had over the course of the last 50 years. Even more, I am suspecting that over the course of time, if not happening already today, we are going to make a very healthy split between work and jobs. Because, you know, they are not the same, no mat [read] Keywords: enterprise integration linkedin mobile office twitter

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How Social Networking Can Improve Work Meetings Sat, May 18th 2013 2:07p Luis Suarez I am not too sure whether meetings lower our IQ or whether they make us all more stupid, as my good friend Stowe Boyd reflected on a recent blog post, but I can certainly confirm they do take a toll on your own productivity. Specially, when those meetings are not set up by you, but by everyone else, and therefore making you lose the control, once again, in terms of one of the most precious things all of us, knowledge workers, have that we don’t seem to treasure well enough: Time. Attentio [read] Keywords: collaboration ibm blogging email google linkedin networking office social software twitter

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Open Business – From Document-Centric to People-Centric Collaboration Mon, May 13th 2013 5:09p Luis Suarez Lately, I have been thinking quite a bit around the topic of Social / Open Business Transformation. Something completely different to what we may have experienced so far in the last three to four years on living social for the sake of social, which is perhaps what we pretty much keep seeing today all over the place. Instead, I keep pondering about how we can transform and redefine the way we do business through our day to day workflow(s) and if there is an idea that keeps coming back stronger b [read] Keywords: collaboration email google instant messaging mac networking social software twitter wiki

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Industrialisation of Social Networking for the Enterprise Sun, May 12th 2013 5:46p Luis Suarez Or, to put it in other words, automation of your social networking presence. That worrying topic has been in my mind for quite a while, and, lately, even more so, specially, seeing how plenty of people continue to automate, even further along, their online digital footprints with the argument, amongst several others, that they have got to do it, because they just can’t find the time anymore to make it happen in a natural, authentic, self-driven manner. Yes, it happens. Yes, it’s a to [read] Keywords: connections ibm blogging email enterprise exchange exchange google networking social software twitter

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Meet Your New CEO – Your Kid Thu, May 9th 2013 4:43p Luis Suarez Summer time is usually one of the busiest times of the year for me in terms of extra curricular work related activities. I know that this may sound a bit weird, but it’s actually rather accurate. While most folks keep enjoying their summer vacation, or a relatively quieter time anyway, my busyness increases a notch or two! And it’s actually quite fine. I have been enjoying it for a good few years already, more than anything else, because of a particular activity that helps me advan [read] Keywords: collaboration ibm email google networking twitter

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Life Without eMail – 5th Year Progress Report – The Community, The Movement Mon, May 6th 2013 3:24p Luis Suarez There have been a lot of people who, over the course of the last few months, have been asking me whatever happened to that initiative I started a while ago around ditching corporate email (Under the moniker “A World Without eMail“), since things seem to have been a bit quiet over here in this blog for a little while on that very same subject. Did I give up on giving up on corporate email? Did I get tired of it and moved back to email? Was the experiment a total failure? Did I get tir [read] Keywords: calendaring connections ibm archive community email google leak networking twitter wiki

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Radical Transparency in the Era of Open Business Fri, May 3rd 2013 1:45p Luis Suarez In a work context, I have always been fascinated by transparency. And, lately, even more about radical transparency. I have always believed that if we would have been, all along, a whole lot more transparent in what we do in the corporate business world, the vast majority of the problems that we are currently suffering from, including what I still think is at the #1 spot, Employee Engagement, all of these troubles would be a thing of the past. Yet, they keep lingering around, because, after al [read] Keywords: collaboration community google network networking twitter

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One Month Anniversary on the New Job as Lead Social Business Enabler Thu, May 2nd 2013 6:05p Luis Suarez I cannot believe that, in just a few minutes from now, I will be celebrating the first month anniversary in my new job as the Lead Social Business Enabler at IBM and I hardly did notice how fast and furious it’s gone by. Goodness! One full month already?!? Where did April go? Even more important, what have I been up to during that time? Well, time for an update that I will try to summarise briefly with these few key words to then perhaps expand further along a single key point that has be [read] Keywords: collaboration connections ibm email linkedin network networking office twitter

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Social Business Adoption – The Laggards, The Critics and The Skeptics Tue, Apr 23rd 2013 4:49a Luis Suarez A couple of years back, Giovanni Rodriguez put together a guest blog post over a ReadWriteWeb on the topic of Enterprise 2.0 Adoption: Does It Have To Be So Hard? and it’s rather interesting to see how almost three years later the challenge seems to be there still, alive and kicking: Social / Open Business Adoption is hard. Well, it should well be. If not, what is the point? What’s the challenge? Where is your vision? Where is the business value? What are your goals? Think of it, [read] Keywords: collaboration ibm enterprise twitter