Check out this week's Business Week cover story: Beyond the Green Corporation: www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_05/b4019001.htm. Also check out Innovest's Top 100 Global Companies that are socially responsible: http://www.global100.org/
The good news this week in preparation for the Davos World Economic Forum is "Green Is In." The difficulty, as a legal and market formation matter, is it's hard to tell the greens from the browns.
Here are some elements for standardizing market definition of "green" that seem missing or inadequate:
- Transparency accounting and how to make FASB/GASB reporting include sustainability and social justice factors
- Branding the supply chain as accountably "green", and sorting out the confusion of a proliferation of brands to that effect
- Providing monetary incentives for companies to restrict themselves to being "green", without imposing the cost of "green" as a premium price for consumers to pay
- Seeing the landscape of all actors in the sustainable business space so as to find trade association-like benefits and political power
Social capital and consumer markets are evolving market formation concepts. The more attention on them, the faster they'll evolve.