B Corps: Redefining success in business

B Corps redefine the meaning of business success, using market forces in order to provide solutions to social and environmental problems. This new type of business expands the fiduciary duty of its shareholders to incorporate non-financial interests, achieving the commitment of generating positive social and environmental impacts, operating with high performance and transparency standards.  All of this is carried out with the vision of an economy in which success is measured by the well-being of people, societies and nature.

This new business paradigm was born in the United States in 2006 from the hand of B Lab, the model's creator, and arrived in Latin America in 2012 by means of Sistema B. This firm catalyzes key actors in the region's ecosystem-impact investors, large public and private buyers, academics, public and political officials, opinion leaders, NGOs and consumers-fostering a context that is favorable to changing the conventional manner of doing business and facilitating the economy's evolution toward sustainability.

The B movement is part of the global trend concerning the role that the private sector should play as an agent for development, a debate from which other alternative economic models have emerged, such as circular economy, shared value and collective benefit and interest companies.

In this sense, Ana Mercedes Botero, CAF director of Social Innovation, highlights the institution's role in constructing this vision. "We contribute by boosting the private sector as an agent for change and by creating a new economy that creates more just and humane societies in line with our institutional vision."

The alliance of the B movement and CAF includes the development of legislation that is favorable to businesses with a purpose, to the consolidation of a global knowledge network that systematizes triple-impact business models, and for the generation of a value offer that is attractive for these businesses, including the strengthening and dissemination of tools for measuring impact and social and environmental benchmarking. To become certified as a B Corp, firms must measure their performance through the B Impact Assessment in five areas in which the organization has an impact-its business model, governance, employment, environment and community-and achieve a minimum score. Issues such as inclusive value chain, responsibility, environmental practices, employee stock ownership and provider relations policies are just some of the aspects that this impact assessment covers, which is an instrument that provides companies with a complete diagnostic on its social and environmental management with the objective of guiding its efforts towards sustainability.

In light of the movement's expansion, the Encuentro Latinoamericano Más B [Latin American Más B Meeting] was held, an encounter which gathered the region's main B movement exponents in order to drive the redefinition of success through the consolidation of this business organization's model; to date, this model has a global reach and already more than 1,900 B Corps in 50 countries, representing 130 industries.