It’s hard to think about brand leadership without thinking about Apple, now neck-and-neck with ExxonMobil as the world’s biggest company by market cap.

Last week, Apple was top of mind for many of us, with two major pieces of reporting: the UK release of Adam Lashinsky’s book, Inside Apple, which describes in part-admiring, part-unmerciful detail Apple’s tough organizational culture, and the New York Times’s excellent investigation into conditions in Apple’s supplier factories in China.

This last piece spurred CEO Tim Cook …

I write this on the plane back to London from a wonderful (if logistically bumpy – thank you State Department and friends for getting me home!) trip to the States, where we kicked off our Signed, Sealed… Delivered? research by running sessions at Sustainable Brands 2011 in Monterey, California (hosted by KoAnn Skyrzniarz and team at Sustainable Life Media), Starbucks (hosted by Ben Packard and Colleen Chapman of the Starbucks global responsibility team) and Method (hosted by director of sustainability Drummond Lawson – see my colleague Mark Lee’s blog for a recap).

With the wonderfully diverse set of B2B and B2C (food & beverage, retail, paper, household & personal care, biotech, industrial materials and carpet) and functional perspectives represented (from procurement to brand & marketing), our goal was to explore the following questions…

Will certifications and labels drive the shift to sustainable consumption?

Seven reasons why we think Better Place is one of the best examples of a 21st-century enterprise out there.

I can't stop thinking about The Most Isolated Man on the Planet

If everyone lived like me, we’d need 4.6 Earths to sustain our lifestyles.

Here’s how I would describe where we think companies should go with their sustainability reporting...

James Fallows had a great piece in May's Atlantic on Google’s work to “[reinvent journalism's] business model.