Pundits and others are hand-wringing and crying over the failure of ‘Social Business.’

The first problem is these people are too dim and too lazy to know even the definition of social business. Rather, they think it is just the next stage of the firm including the commercial enterprise. Good grief.

For the record, a social business is a non-loss, non-dividend company designed to address a social objective within a highly regulated marketplace. The term was coined and used mostly by Nobel Peace Prize laureate, professor Muhammad Yunus. If you don’t know who this is, please, look it up. 

For virtually everyone else, social business is pure hyperbole. The hubris is palpable. Even worse, people are breathing their own exhaust. It’s suicide.

With the major exception of Prof. Yunus and the breakthrough work in Bangladesh and elsewhere, social business belongs in the pantheon of dopey business terms. For everyone else it is just another disgusting rhetorical excess.   

ALL business, from time immemorial, is social. No exceptions.

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It’s time for the pundits to give us a break. While you are relaxing, please acknowledge.

• Economics is a branch discipline of sociology; all human activity, particularly business, is social.
  
• Two enterprise views drive productivity and productivity growth (innovation) –

1.) Transaction cost economics (TCE)
2.) Knowledge-based view (KBV)

• Insofar that people using new information technology can improve TCE and KBV productivity then it is good and will create prosperous outcomes.
  
• The purpose of business is to create a customer. (Drucker)
  
• Enlightened view will not be the business norms until we finally retire the ever-so-popular Fordist mindset of business. That’s a long way off.

It does little good to put lipstick on a pig. However, people wake-up and do it every day. It is called managerialism and it sucks.

Let’s put ‘social business’ on the shelf with these other legacy terms. Then, well, let’s get down to the business of business!

C’mon, business is not about managing new terms. Business is about leadership, leading and creating the future.