What Is a B Corp? A Clear Guide to B Corp Certification, the New Standards, and Business Transformation

When a company starts talking about sustainability, it quickly runs into a stack of terms: ESG, net zero, the SDGs, sustainability reports, and B Corp among them.

Of these, B Corp raises the most questions. What exactly is a B Corp, and how does it differ from an ordinary company, from ESG, or from a social enterprise?

In short, a B Corp is not an industry, and not a legal company type defined by government. It is an international certification of a company's overall social, environmental and governance performance.

It looks at far more than how much a company donates or how many charity events it runs. It looks at how the company makes money, how it makes decisions, and how it treats employees, customers, suppliers, communities and the environment along the way.

B Corp in 30 seconds

B Corp is short for Certified B Corporation.

The certification is run by B Lab, an international nonprofit founded in 2006. To earn it, a company must be assessed and verified against B Lab's standards for social, environmental and governance performance.

As of 2026, there are more than 10,000 Certified B Corporations worldwide, spread across more than 100 countries and over 160 industries, and together they employ more than 1 million people.

A company should answer not only to its shareholders and its profits, but also to the people and the environment affected by its decisions.

The “B” is commonly understood to stand for Benefit. It reflects the idea that a company should aim not only to be the best in the world, but also to be better for the world.

What does B Corp certification assess?

B Corp is an integrated certification. It does not look only at carbon emissions, or only at employee benefits. It starts from the company's operations as a whole and asks whether responsible business practices have been built into its systems and decisions.

B Lab published its new standards in 2025. Companies submitting new applications from 2026 are certified under the V2.1 standards, and the process now relies on independent audit and verification by third parties in line with ISO 17021-1.

The new standards have two main parts.

Part 1: Three foundation requirements

A company must meet three foundation requirements before it can be assessed on the impact topics:

• Eligibility: The company must be legally established, have operated for at least 12 months, and comply with the laws where it operates.
• Adopting the B Corp legal requirement: The company must commit to stakeholder governance, so that the impact of its decisions on employees, customers, suppliers, communities and the environment is something it is required to weigh.
• Completing a risk assessment: The company must build a risk profile using B Lab's risk tool, which identifies whether additional due diligence is needed.

Part 2: Seven impact topics

The new standards require companies to take concrete action on seven social, environmental and governance topics:

• Purpose and stakeholder governance: Define the company's purpose and bring stakeholders into decision-making, rather than weighing only shareholder returns.
• Climate action: Understand the company's greenhouse gas emissions and put in place climate action that fits its size and context.
• Justice, equity, diversity and inclusion: Build a fairer, more inclusive and more diverse workplace, and consider the company's impact on social equity.
• Government affairs and collective action: Handle public policy, advocacy, lobbying and industry collaboration responsibly and transparently.
• Fair work: Provide quality jobs, and a safe, respectful workplace with a positive culture.
• Human rights: Respect human rights, and identify the human rights risks that may arise in the company's own operations and value chain.
• Environmental stewardship and circularity: Manage environmental impacts across operations and the value chain, and advance resource efficiency, waste reduction and the circular economy.

How do the new B Corp standards differ from the old ones?

Many people know B Corp certification as a points system: through the B Impact Assessment, companies accumulate a score across governance, workers, community, environment and customers.

Under the old system, a company generally needed at least 80 points out of 200 on that assessment before moving on to further review.

But a cumulative score has a built-in flaw. A company can do very well in one area, fall well short in another important one, and still pass on its total.

For example, a company might score highly on environmental management without adequate protections for its employees. Or it might offer excellent benefits while having little visibility into human rights and environmental risks in its supply chain.

So the new standards no longer rely on a cumulative score alone. A company must meet the applicable minimum requirements within each of the seven impact topics.

One standout achievement can no longer stand in for a company's overall sustainability performance.

Sustainability is not about picking the one thing that is easiest to communicate and doing it best. It is about managing a company's impact on people and the environment more comprehensively.

B Corp certification is a five-year improvement journey, not a one-time pass

The new system extends the certification cycle to five years. At initial certification a company must meet the Year 0 requirements, then progressively reach the more advanced Year 3 and Year 5 requirements, and may be subject to monitoring audits in between.

Micro and small companies are generally audited at Year 0, Year 3 and Year 5; larger companies may be reviewed more often.

The design carries an important message: certification does not prove that a company is perfect. It sets up a mechanism for continuous improvement.

A company does not have to do everything on day one. It does need to know where it stands today, what to change next, and how to show that the improvement has really happened.

How is B Corp different from ESG?

B Corp and ESG are often discussed together, but they are not the same thing.

ESG is a framework for managing and assessing issues

ESG stands for Environmental, Social and Governance. Companies, investors, financial institutions and supply chains use the ESG framework to identify and manage material risks and opportunities.

B Corp is a company-level certification

B Corp uses a defined set of standards, assessments, legal requirements and third-party verification to examine whether a company has truly built social, environmental and governance responsibility into how it operates.

Put simply: ESG helps a company identify the issues it needs to manage; B Corp goes a step further and asks whether those issues have made it into the company's systems and actual actions.

The two do not conflict, and you do not have to choose one. A company can use ESG to map its material issues, then use the B Lab standards to test how complete its operations are and how much they have improved.

Is a B Corp the same as a social enterprise?

Not quite.

A social enterprise typically has solving a specific social or environmental problem as its core mission, and earns revenue through a business model.

A B Corp is a certification. An ordinary for-profit company, a manufacturer, a financial institution, a tech company, a consultancy, a restaurant brand or a social enterprise can all apply for B Corp certification, as long as they meet the eligibility criteria and the standards.

• A social enterprise is not necessarily a B Corp.
• A B Corp is not necessarily defined as a social enterprise.
• Both may pursue social and environmental value, but the frameworks and the way each is recognized are different.

How is a B Corp different from a benefit corporation?

B Corp is a company certification. A benefit corporation is a legal company form adopted in some countries.

Holding legal status as a benefit corporation does not mean a company has passed B Corp's impact assessment and verification. Conversely, a company that earns B Corp certification is not necessarily registered as a benefit corporation where it is based.

What the two share is the principle that company directors and management should weigh the interests of other stakeholders, not just shareholders, when they make decisions.

Do Taiwanese companies need to amend their articles of incorporation?

Under the Taiwan legal requirements B Lab currently publishes, Taiwanese companies do not need to amend their articles of incorporation or other founding documents in order to be certified.

However, at certification a company must sign the B Corp Agreement, committing to consider the impact of its decisions on employees, customers, suppliers, communities and the environment, to the extent the law allows.

In other words, even though Taiwanese companies are not yet required to change their legal form, they still have to make a formal commitment to stakeholder governance.

How many B Corps are there in Taiwan?

According to the list published by B Lab Taiwan, Taiwan currently has 63 Certified B Corporations across manufacturing, finance, education, technology, consulting, food and beverage, and sustainability services. DOMI Earth is one of them.

This shows that B Corp is not only for consumer brands or large multinationals. From small and mid-sized companies and professional service firms to manufacturers, any company can use the standards to take a fresh look at how it operates.

Which companies is B Corp certification right for?

The following kinds of companies are especially well placed to start learning about B Corp:

1. Companies that have taken many ESG actions but lack an overall framework

A company may already have done carbon inventories, tree planting, volunteering, employee care or community partnerships, yet each effort stands alone and there is no shared strategy. The B Lab standards help a company take stock of its operations as a whole.

2. Companies that want to turn founding beliefs into company systems

A company may have a clear mission, but its values are carried mainly by the founder or a few leaders. B Corp's stakeholder governance requirement pushes it to turn those beliefs into policies, processes, accountabilities and management mechanisms.

3. Companies facing sustainability demands from customers and supply chains

When international customers start asking about carbon emissions, human rights, environmental policies, employee practices and supply chain management, a company needs the internal capability to keep answering them.

4. Companies that want to strengthen trust with their brand and their talent

B Corp certification tells customers, employees and investors that a company is willing to be examined externally and to keep improving its social and environmental performance.

5. Companies that want business growth and impact to move in the same direction

Some companies want to do more than reduce negative impact. They want to create positive value through their products, services and business models. They can use the B Lab standards to check whether impact has truly reached their core business.

Where can a company start on the way to becoming a B Corp?

• Create a B Impact account: Go to the B Impact platform and complete the free self-assessment to see where you currently stand on social, environmental and governance performance.
• Confirm the scope of certification: Clarify which legal entities, brands, sites and subsidiaries need to be included.
• Review the three foundation requirements: Confirm eligibility, the stakeholder governance commitment, and whether any material risks need additional handling.
• Complete a gap analysis across the seven topics: Compare current practice with B Lab's requirements and find the items that do not yet meet them or lack evidence.
• Build an improvement plan: You do not have to fix everything at once, but you should prioritize the most important gaps and set an owner, a timeline and a way to measure each one.
• Submit your application and go through the audit: After you submit, a designated third-party verifier schedules the audit. If a major non-conformance is found, it must be resolved before certification is granted.

Want to see how sustainability connects back to your core business first?

Understanding the framework is one thing; connecting it to your own business is another. The “See Your Sustainability Opportunity” half-day workshop goes beyond explaining the framework. In 3.5 hours, starting from the business, customers and capabilities you already have, each company works out a one-page “sustainability opportunity sketch” of its own. Each session is limited to 5–8 companies, with up to 2 people per company.

Learn about the half-day workshop

Does every company need B Corp certification?

No.

B Corp is a valuable tool, but not every company needs to apply right away at every stage. Some can start by using the B Lab standards for a self-assessment, clarify their purpose and operational gaps, and then decide whether to pursue formal certification.

What matters most is not earning a badge first, but whether the company starts facing these questions:

• How do we make our profit?
• Who benefits from our operations?
• Who may be bearing costs that no one sees?
• As the company grows, does its positive impact grow with it?
• When short-term gains conflict with long-term value, how do we decide?

Understanding your impact starts before certification

A company does not have to wait until it decides to apply for B Corp before it starts examining its impact. Whether or not it ends up certified, the B Lab standards offer a fairly complete mirror: they show what is already working, and which impacts are not yet being managed.

DOMI Earth believes the real starting point of sustainability transformation is not one more activity or one more completed form. It is a company beginning to rethink: who do we create value for, and what do we want to be needed for?

Further reading: A B Corp Is Not a Certificate. It Is a Decision