"Social business"--what does it mean to you?

We just read a mind-boggling, three-page blog post on What Social Business means. It was full of terms that we just don't use socially. We pulled this gem, in particular:

"[Social business] is a sociopolitical historical shift that is bigger, broader and much more fascinating."

We're going to be a lot more brief--and more understandable--than that.

First let's look at a business that's truly bought into the social business model.

IBM has crafted an entire strategy around not just using social media, but about ensuring that all of their employees understand what it means to be a truly social business. (IBM no longer sells directly to the consumer, so it has to pay added attention to what its employees want and feel.) Specifically, it's operating on a three different levels:
1. Engagement
2. Transparency
3. Nimbleness
We like this concept. We fully embrace the fact that businesses, even ones that are B-to-B, should be engaged with their employees and their customer base; that we should be as transparent as possible, and that we need to react well and fast to any opportunities and challenges that come our way.

But we don't think it's all that complicated, nor do we think it's all that revolutionary. Our vision is this: People first. That means customers and employees. And really, it can be illustrated at a micro level.

For instance, it used to be that you went out and bought something at a big box store, and that was the end of it. Now it works like this:

1. You're looking for an widget, so you ask your friends on Facebook what widgets they like the best.
2. Your friends recommend several options, but one stands out above all the others.
3. You go on to amazon.com; etsy.com; ebay.com, and search for this particular widget.
4. You find a widget that's been highly recommended by other widget-experienced people, on sale from a seller with high recommendations from other widget-purchasers.
5. You order your widget. The widget-seller tells you when it ships.
6. You get your widget and are happy or sad or just enh about it, so you feed back directly to the widget-seller about your experience.

See? It's social all the way through. There is communication all the way through, and transparency too. At its best, this is the way business should work.

For us at The Hub, that means the following:
1. We maintain as much transparency as possible: Our green standards, for instance, are readily available to our clients.
2. We make sure our clients have ample opportunity to feed back to us about what we can do better.
3. We make sure our employees are encouraged to feed back to our leadership--and each other--about where we've gone right, and where we can do better.

How is your business social?

Eco-Monday: Car Sharing

Monday: Costco run; take the pickup
Wednesday: Farmer's market run; take the Prius
Thursday: Client meeting at The Hub Chemical Heritage Foundation site; take the Audi.

No, no, it's not the schedule of our friendly local millionaire; the guy with the twenty-car garage. It's the way our partners at PhillyCarShare envision a potential work week.

Goodness! So many cars to choose from!

As much as we love the idea of changing cars as often as we change our shoes, we're truly enamored of car-sharing for its environmental benefits. How's that, you say? It's still a car on the road, isn't it?
Well--at face value, it is. But for those of us working and living in big cities like Philadelphia, New York, and Chicago, it makes complete and total environmental sense to just have a car when we need it. Experts at Carsharing.net, an industry resource, estimate that for every one car share, there are 15-20 fewer cars on the road.
How's it work? Well, take PhillyCarShare for example. When staff at The Hub have to go between sites, we make a reservation at PhillyCarShare.org. We go to pick up the car at one of PhillyCarShare's many convenient parking spaces, and drop it off later.

Philly Car Share locations are convenient and plentiful.

In the end, we're keeping cars off the road by borrowing from a pool of cars that already exist. We're living healthier lives, because we've gotten used to walking or bicycling places that we might have just previously driven to out of sheer laziness.

And although the environmental benefits of car-sharing might be long-term, the economical value of our arrangement with PhillyCarShare is really quite immediate: We don't have to buy a fleet of Hub vehicles. And that makes car sharing a smart business decision, at the very least.