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This “fourth benchmark” goes beyond metrics comparisons to a baseline year, to competitors, or to an internal company goal. The Gold Standard would use material, science-based key performance indicators and goals that could identify a truly sustainable business. Willard is actively working with a broad range of stakeholders from the capital markets to non-profit sustainability experts such as the Natural Step and GISR.

And one factor pushing the acceptance and utilization of metrics is the shortening timeframes of risk management in the wake of recent climate events. Gil Friend, founder and CEO or Natural Logic, Inc., said he trusts that each new measuring tool adds new worlds of understanding of “capital,” whether monetary, environmental or social.

profound differences in commitment to corporate purpose. 

This close involvement of owners and founders in SMEs means that commitment to purpose is much easier to engender than in a large, publicly-held corporation. 

more personal. 

SMEs increasingly find that they are part of a value chain where a large company downstream (for example, a major brand or a retailer) is demanding attention by suppliers to sustainability metrics and performance.

ikely to mean that less funds are available to invest in initiatives that might be socially or environmentally beneficial, especially if the economic pay-off is less obvious or longer term.

SMEs might also be less able to bring to scale the efficiency gains that can come from attention to CSR or exploit the business opportunities that might come through innovation in the form of new, more sustainable products. 

In sum, while size matters, not least in what gets done, SMEs have many of the same reasons for engaging in CSR that large companies have, both in avoiding downside risk and in exploiting upside opportunities.  In many cases, they may also be more intrinsically, if not better motivated, to give CSR attention.

If business is to regain the trust of society, it must start to tackle the big social and environmental issues that confront humanity, especially at a time when governments seem increasingly to be caught in shorter and shorter election cycles and have a hard time internalizing the global challenges in an increasingly interdependent world. As I have said many times, "business can not be a mere bystander in the system that gives it life." The environmentalist Paul Hawken believes that if there is any deficit we are facing right now, it's a deficit of meaning. Many are talking about the need for a GDP+. A broader measure of success than just simply wealth creation.

Small actions, big difference. Yes, we all have a role to play.