Among business conversations I’ve witnessed over my career, the topics of corporate social responsibility and sustainability have tended to invoke a collective yawn. Yes they’re important, but such concerns were frequently considered a bore, separate from the business of doing business. An extra, a luxury–not suited to the every day pressures of work. I know because we at HBR spend our lives discussing article ideas along those lines, and our obligation to readers and authors is to give them something they can get passionate about. Until recently, it took some effort to work up the passion for these themes. They were too vague, too high-minded, and too hard to wrap your arms around, and not enough about the numbers. To be honest, vague and high-minded are boring to me as well.