But the B Corp community is genuinely ambitious. And it is part of a wider international movement of CEOs, investors, and business-school professors who hope to transform the way business is done, creating a more “sustainable” system of capitalism. Parts of the movement are familiar. Environmentally friendly business practices have long been mainstream, particularly when they create a brand advantage, as with organic foods. Humane treatment of the developing-world workers who sew our clothes or build our iPads isn’t quite as popular a brand promise, but it is hardly novel.

What is newer is the worry about the Western middle class and the fear that capitalism as it currently operates isn’t delivering for that broad swath of society. In summing up the Colorado retreat, the B Lab team emphasized this idea, touting the “higher-quality jobs” that B Corps provide relative even to other socially minded businesses that have subjected themselves to a review of their social impact: employees are 45 percent more likely to be paid bonuses than people at those firms, and 55 percent more likely to have at least some of their health-care costs paid. B Corps are also 18 percent more likely to choose suppliers from low-income communities.

“We are going through a shift,” said Marcello Palazzi, one of the leaders of the B Corp movement in Europe. “Society as a whole is realizing the capitalist system itself is quite dysfunctional. We have created an economy and corporations that in many ways have become unethical. One response is to go out on the streets, like Occupy Wall Street. Another is the B Corp movement.”

In Western capitalism circa 2013, fear that the market economy has become dysfunctional is not limited to a few entrepreneurs in Boulder. It is being publicly expressed, with increasing frequency, by some of the people who occupy the commanding heights of the global economy.

Dominic Barton, the global managing director at McKinsey, is one critic: “Capitalism, even 150 years ago, was more inclusive; there was more of a sense of social responsibility,” he told me. Today, trust in business is declining. “The system doesn’t seem to be as fair or as inclusive. It doesn’t seem to be helping broader society.”

Barton’s concern is shared by David Blood, a former head of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, who co-founded the investment firm Generation Investment Management with former Vice President Al Gore a decade ago. “Some people say income inequality doesn’t matter. I disagree,” Blood said. “We are creating a situation in which only the elite of the elite can be successful—and that is not sustainable.”

Both men worry that if capitalism doesn’t deliver for the middle class, then the middle class will eventually opt for something else. Business needs what Barton calls “a license to operate,” and without a new approach, he fears, it risks losing that license.