News from the world of reports and knowledge. The cool hunting site PSFK featured an abstract of our CSR 2.0 working paper a couple of days ago. We got some criticism for lack of references and examples. We quickly remedied that with a new version (although the paper originally was meant more like a mix between a manifesto and forecast.) However, for the critique of hyping and skepticism on whether a convergence between the public engagement of Web 2.0 and corporate responsibility is actually taking place, here are two pieces that seriously back our claims and predictions.

The core tenet of the latest Trendwatching report on ‘Transparency‘ is quite in line with both Actics and our CSR 2.0 perspective in specific. It contains numerous great examples of what happens if you ride the transparency wave - and if you don’t (the links under 4 are especially relevant for us). The report offers amble documentation for how CSR is becoming a matter for the masses online. Everything is up for investigation, evaluation and comparison – including corporate conduct (It sounds like a no-brainer but is more complex than that, as the recent Edelman report indicate). The solution?

Getting worried about your own brand? While most brands show a Pavlovian tendency to spend even more on ‘disaster-handling’ courses, the real solution is of course to not misbehave or underperform ;-)

The Trendwatching report links to a recent Wired article on transparency, The See-Through CEO. It is just as interesting and contains other instructive examples of the value of transparency and honesty in hyper-connected age. This quote alone captures the main point of our CSR 2.0 perspective:

The new breed of naked executives also discover that once people are interested in you, they’re interested in helping you out - by offering ideas, critiques, and extra brain cycles. Customers become working partners.

Highly recommended readings!

If any of you like to comment on and thus improve our CSR 2.0 paper please find an almost daily updated version here.