B Lab is the nonprofit network transforming the global economy to benefit all people, communities, and the planet. Building on its standards and certification process, B Lab’s network leads economic systems change to support a collective vision of an inclusive, equitable, and regenerative economy. B Lab’s programs and tools help B Corps and non-B Corps plan for a resilient future—including multinationals looking to understand their social and environmental footprint—and its policy work pushes for meaningful legal change around corporate accountability and social impact. B Lab began in 2006 with the idea that a different kind of economy was not only possible but necessary, and that business could lead the way toward a new, stakeholder-driven model. While B Lab became known for certifying B Corporations—companies meeting high standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency—the organization does much more. B Lab is building the B Corp movement to change the economic system by changing the rules of the game, creating standards, policies, tools, and programs that shift the behavior, culture, and structural underpinnings of capitalism. B Lab mobilizes the B Corp community toward collective action to address society’s most critical challenges, harnessing the power of business to positively impact companies worldwide, helping them balance profit with purpose. Together, B Lab is shifting the global economy from a system that profits few to one that benefits all: advancing a new model that moves from concentrating wealth and power to ensuring equity, from extraction to generation, and from prioritizing individualism to embracing interdependence.
Why it matters: B Lab demonstrates that transforming capitalism requires not just certifying individual companies as socially responsible but mobilizing them as a movement to change the rules of the game through standards, policies, and legal reforms. By creating infrastructure—certification, tools, policy advocacy—that shifts the behavior, culture, and structural underpinnings of capitalism itself, B Lab shows that moving from extraction to generation and from individualism to interdependence demands systemic intervention beyond voluntary corporate action. The organization’s vision that all business must become a force for good and its work pushing for legal change around corporate accountability reflects understanding that advancing an inclusive, equitable, and regenerative economy requires transforming what business is legally obligated to do, not merely what enlightened companies choose to do.
