You may say I’m a dreamer but I’m not the only one. (John Lennon)
A few months ago I bumped into Wouter Vermeulen, a friend with whom I worked on fund-raising activities in the past for Third World countries. We were college students then and after some talking it seemed that both of us are still working on social responsibility and fundraising activities.
Partnerships of Sustainability
Wouter agreed to do this one-minute-interview, which turned out to be about the future of social responsibility. He believes in partnerships of corporate social responsibility as the next step for a more sustainable world. A lot of companies have been putting a great deal of effort into corporate social responsibility and sustainability. Yet, we are now finding that they are touching a ceiling of ‘how much more sustainable can we get?’
Instead of falling into an unhealthy cycle of corporate anorexia (being more sustainable than sustainable), Vermeulen suggests that we should be looking at the next level of corporate responsibility: partnerships.
The Answer to ‘How’ is ‘Why’
Partnerships for corporate responsibility require a mental change: instead of being the best (or ‘most sustainable’) one should aspire to become the platform for sustainability to reach its next level. It’s a subtle change with far-reaching consequences:
- Being the most sustainable puts you in a competition of sustainability. Even when you are the leader of the pack, the solution will be sub-optimal for the complete landscape of companies;
- On the other hand, being the platform for sustainability puts you in a position of leadership where ‘winning’ no longer is a zero-sum game. There is no such thing as ‘competition’ in that case, and success can only be achieved if partnerships are solid and focussed on a common goal.
The next step is to build platforms for exchanging and sharing know-how between these public and private actors. One can only do so by looking at the entire supply chain and the entire lifespan of a product or a service.
Big Deal?
Upon reviewing this video I was struck with the idea that this may be where the real future of ‘social’ is heading. Unfortunately the noise and the speed of all the developments of social media and social networks are not giving us any time to pause, breathe and reflect on the real question: ‘Why?’ and ‘Where is this al leading to in the long run?’
The so-called ‘social media revolution’ and the impact on companies has led me to write about Social Architecture, i.e.: a new balance between hierarchy and communities. Wouter’s point on partnerships underscores that social architecture is only a temporary form and not an end in itself.
In the long run, social architectures will facilitate a kind of organizational ‘osmosis‘ that is necessary to get to the next level: partnerships of sustainability. Therefore I firmly believe that the future is to those who invest in platforms of sustainability.
I hope someday you’ll join us. And the world will live as one. (John Lennon)
