Over the 20 years I’ve worked at the intersection of business and society, I’ve seen many terms applied to this part of the business agenda: compliance, eco-efficiency, corporate social responsibility, socially responsible investing, green, clean, sustainability, regenerative, net zero, net positive, and many more.

Some variation in how we talk about all of this is helpful, but we also need some common language that’s both relatively easy to comprehend and interesting. In tech, for example, “blockchain” sounds much cooler than “a shared, immutable ledger for recording transactions.” In the realm of the overlap of business and society, sustainability has had the most staying power, often for lack of something more exciting.

Continued