Summary
The Change the World Ranking unites two gorillas. Several Fortune Rankings are of highest influence worldwide. Michael Porter’s and Mark Kramer’s Shared Value Initiative is a globally known and influential initiative to integrate sustainability into business strategy. The Change the World Ranking also closes a gap in Fortune’s ranking-universe as there was no sustainability ranking so far.

The ranking is entirely built on the judgment of a jury consisting of “dozens of experts” from all over the world and Fortune’s editors. By this it is clearly distinct from other major sustainability rankings, which are all purely data based. It considers four criteria: degree of business innovation involved, the measurable impact at scale on an important social challenge, the contribution of the shared-value activities to the company’s profitability and competitive advantage, and the significance of the shared value effort to the overall business. In a two-step process the universe of companies introduced by the experts is boiled down to some 200 and then to the list of 50 companies published. Fortune’s editors seem to be responsible for the final list.

The makers explain themselves that it is not their intention to provide a ranking of “good” or “social responsible” companies but to shed a spotlight on positive examples where companies have a considerable impact on social or environmental problems while still operating within their profit-making strategy. Therefore the list is a combination of projects and corporations making it hard to compare the results.

This year’s Change the World ranking is headed by a joint project of Vodafone and Safaricom called M-Pesa, which gives people without bank account in countries like in East Africa but also in Romania and Albania a possibility to save and transfer money. Runners-up are Google/Alphabet (several projects like Scholar, Books, Translate etc.) and Toyota for its Hybrid-Technology. Among the top 10 are two pharmaceutical companies, two other Internet giants, but also Walmart and a Utility company. This demonstrates the diversity of the companies and projects in this ranking making it hard to compare and assess the standings.

This approach leaves space for criticism e.g. the question about the usefulness of such a collection of exemplary projects in form of a ranking. But on the other hand it opens space for discussion on sustainable business models and projects within the for-profit-business framework worldwide – which is definitely a top agenda item of Porter’s and Kramer’s Shared Value Initiative. But the ranking also serves the PR-goal to keep awareness high for FSG and the Shared Value Initiative. Furthermore it would help to get some more transparency on the experts involved and the indicators behind the criteria.

So it remains to be seen whether the Change the World Ranking will become a more useful ranking in the next years – providing further insights on whether a corporation proceeded in its development and where a company stands compared to its peers – or whether it will stay to be a probable highly influential and with no doubt credible collection of best practice. The results are available here.