Last Sunday’s NY Times business section article on for-benefit businesses “Businesses Try to Make Money and Save the World” has been bringing a lot of attention to xigi because it covered  Jay Coen Gilbert’s B Lab, which is creating a certification and branding effort to let good businesses display their inherent value and we were one of the first to write about it. Jay, a marketing genius joined at the hip with his quieter, operations-focused partner Bart Houlahan, is racing to build the meta-brand of good for all of us, was also interviewed on Marketplace, the public radio show this week. Here’s an excerpt from his interview: “It’s pretty simple,” Jay said. “You change the rules, you change behavior. You change behavior, you change outcomes. If the rules of the game are maximize returns to shareholders, then by definition, other stakeholders are gonna suffer. And it’s those other stakeholders — like your employees or the environment — that need more looking after right now. Not just shareholders, he says. The marketplace reporter concludes with this: “We’ll see which companies get the title B-corporation next month, when Gilbert’s nonprofit, B-Lab, announces its first certified list. “

At Good Capital, we are like any startup; capacity constrained and rushing headlong to execute on our initial goals. We don’t have a lot of time for engaging in partnerships that don’t get us quickly down the path we have chosen. The single partnership we are engaged in that is worth deploying staff resources other than myself (I’m lead our market formation efforts so engaging outside the company is core to what I do) is with Jay and Bart’s group. We want to be in that initial certified list so we get mentioned on Marketplace next month.

Riding on Jay and Bart’s bandwagon, and delivering to their efforts whatever endorsement we can is worth it. An umbrella, branding effort like Jay’s could, in this social capital market get bogged down in scarcity thinking tht is endemic to the resource-constrained non profit world, but I think there is enough new money, enough new players that we can get over that old way of thinking and get on board with the abundance approach he’s championing. If you set up new, rules, you’ve got a new game. I’m up for it.