Trust takes years to build, but only a mistake or two to lose. This is especially true for companies with strong lines of personal and home care products, a business where competition is intense, alternatives are plentiful, and reputation is central to customer loyalty.

In the coming decade, such companies will be affected by a number of key issues that are prominent in the US business context:

• Transparency: Expectations and man-dates with respect to non-financial information will intensify, reaching well beyond environmental issues to encompass social, economic and governance aspects of the company.
• Product safety: A perennial issue for the chemical and health products sectors, and one that historically has intensified in sudden and unexpected ways.
• Job quality and security: Companies seriously committed to human capital development must “walk the talk” through training, livable wages, profit-sharing and other measures that concurrently support corporate responsibility and competitive advantage in terms of attracting, nurturing and retaining top talent.
• Transforming business models from product to services: Service-oriented business models that substitute knowledge for physical inputs point the way toward dematerialising the production of both industrial and consumer products.
• The United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDG)*: Companies should be asked if what they produce - and how they produce - contributes to meeting these goals in both the domestic and global context.