B Corp: the certification details

Are B Corps redefining business for the 21st century? | Guardian Sustainable Business | Guardian Professional: "Individuals have ideas. The good ones attract followers. The right followers generate a movement. The transition from one to another is not always easy to identify, and harder still to explain.

Has the B Corp idea arrived? It's impossible to say for sure, but Andrew Kassoy must be quietly confident. More than 620 companies have signed up. Some, such as the clothing retailer Patagonia, are seriously big players. Even global statesmen are singing B Corp's praises.

"We don't know him or anything", says Kassoy, in reference to former US president Bill Clinton, who recently waxed lyrical about the B Corp concept during a speech at Oxford University. "I guess someone must have been talking to him about us."..

B Corp, or B Corporation to give it its full name, is a response to this sea change. At its most basic, it's a certification scheme. Companies sign up, undergo a self-assessment and have their social and environmental credentials independently verified. If their policies and performance pass muster, they are allowed to join the B Corp club.

Kassoy, who came up with the original B Corp idea five years ago with two course mates from Stanford University, accepts that there's already "an alphabet soup of certifications" out there. Isn't this just another? He insists not. His, he says, is "comprehensive".