The development of corporate integrated reporting (IR) standards has the promise to be one of the great business innovations of the 21st century, and could be pivotal in restoring public trust in business institutions, Harvard Business School Dean Nitin Nohria told a seminal gathering of IR key stakeholders at an HBS workshop last week.

Crises are normal and of all times: they are always generally unexpected, with the next one quite different from the previous one (as we have put the breaks and stress-tests in place to prevent the previous one from occurring again), and more difficult to contain, manage and resolve. What the current crisis has taught us is how interdependent the world has become;

Corporate leaders are challenged to step up to greater commitments on sustainability, and to ensure they have performance measures for behaviour directly linked to responsibility and trust if they are to succeed. With sustainability driving trust and innovation, companies are making it core to their strategies and activities, so having stand-alone CSR (corporate social responsibility) departments looks like a fast-declining trend. This is according to global reputation auditors Echo Research, in their latest report, "A World in Trust - Leadership and Corporate Responsibility" with the International Business Leaders Forum (IBLF).