Meant to be in Seoul today for the Business for Environment (B4E) summit, but rendered impossible by Icelandic ash cloud. Had been meant to take part in various plenary, breakfast and lunch sessions, so we had offered either to do a live link (which would have had me in a studio in the early hours) or a video. Dow Chemical opted for a video for their lunch session, so that has been a key part of today's story, with Sam woken at 05.00 this morning by a call from Seoul.... more >

International Day
Volans hosts the world

A second day of hosting people stranded after the Skoll World Forum by the Icelandic eruption - this time with folk from Canada, China, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. Very lively discussion, but even livelier after the arrival of Jack Sim of the WTO (World Toilet Organisation).... more >

SustainAbility Alumni Party
Gathering of SustainAbility and Volans tribes

Delightful evening today at SustainAbility, an Alumni Party, which I could get to because Icelandic ash had stopped me flying to Seoul today. The event pulled in an extraordinary range of people, from Jonathan Shopley who was working with me before SustainAbility and Julia Hailes who co-founded the company with me in 1987, through successive generations right up to the present day.... more >

What's Unreasonable in Chinese?
The answer's here, somewhere

The foreign language editions of  our book The Power of Unreasonable People continue to crank out - shown here is the cover of the Chinese version, just published. I think we even get a tiny payment for this, which is a step forward after a number of my other books have been pirated there.... more >

Skoll World Forum 2010
A glorious glow under the ash cloud

Slightly s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d week, among other things heading down to Oxford by train on Tuesday evening for a Skoll Foundation dinner at Christ Church College, to celebrate the new round of awardees, ahead of the 2010 Skoll World Forum. Glorious glow as I was warmly greeted by many of the entrepreneurs. Next, joy of joys, found myself seated next to Sally Osberg and Jeff Skoll at the dinner, with Paul Hawken the other side of Sally, as a sequence of extraordinary social entrepreneurs took the stage to headline what they are doing around the world.... more >

News of Another World
Day trip to Duxford

Tessa accompanied Tim as he was driven across the country to RAF Duxford yesterday, for a photo-shoot, the results of which appear in today's News of the World. An interview here. Among the delights we discussed this morning were a Catalina (one of my favourite aircraft) and a Mustang (which he flew in WWII), plus he was able to scramble into the Spitfire (ditto), though with a bit more effort than would have been the case 70 years ago.... more >

Wildlife from Junk
Unsoldered creation

Came across the work of sculptor Edouard Martinet today, while reading the latest UK edition of Wired magazine. Wrote to him immediately. The pieces are made of all sorts of everyday debris, from car-lights and wheel-spokes to old typewriters. If only all our junk could find such happy afterlives.... more >

McKinsey Publish My Scaling Essay
Including new 2x2 matrix

Some people get their kicks out of driving 4x4s up country lanes, but I prefer 2x2s. My latest matrix, which I'm using to think my way through what Volans should be doing over the next 5-10 years, appears in an essay that McKinsey have just posted on their 'What Matters' platform, here. Part of a series published ahead of the upcoming Skoll World Forum.... more >

Wild Cards in the C-Suite
New series of Fast Company blogs

They are intended to go out in a day-by-series shortly, but Fast Company has already internally posted the 7-blog series I have written this past week with Charmian (Love). This is my first effort towards getting our thinking sorted on how the social innovation and wider sustainability agendas intersect with the C-Suite world.... more >

Cliveden
At last

We dropped in at Cliveden - which neither of us had visited before - on the way home this afternoon, had lunch in The Orangery, then walked down to the Thames, where I was looking for boats for Caroline to paint. Not even the slightest whiff of scandal these days, which was slightly sad. The Profumo Affair was one of those pivotal moments in generational politics, but my main memory, as a schoolboy, was being fascinated by the sex. Industrial quantities of mistletoe festoon the ride of trees that run from the main house to the Fountain of Love, which seemed vaguely appropriate.... more >

Hill House
Westward ho

Drove across to Hill House in wonderful sunshine, then - after wonderful lunch - out to Adlestrop, where Elaine wanted to the see the railway station that featured in a poem she likes, but we failed to find it. Meanwhile Marina came via rail, picked up from Kingham station. House full of the family young and their friends. Up to the WWII diary image above, the photos above were taken yesterday, the later ones today. Last night Caroline had us watch the film Last Chance Harvey, with Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson, which turned out to be quite wonderful.... more >

Stories of the Sea and Air
Sir Keith Park and other attractions

Dropped in on Hatchard's, buying Stories of the Sea, edited by Diana Secker Tesdell - and sporting one of the most beautiful book covers I have ever come across, based on painting of the schooner Volunteer under full sail.  ... more >

A Walk in Kew
Brief respite from writing

Have been writing almost flat out since Friday morning, but we managed to take a walk in Kew this afternoon, which was glorious. A decompression of sorts. What a treasure the place is. Bumped into people we knew, almost inevitably. Then back to the keyboard.... more >

Gliding, Way Back Then
A younger Homo volans

The only time I went gliding, shown in the photo above, with me in the front seat, I was around 17, I think, and the turbulence made me feel quite green.  Imagine the photo was taken by Tim, who insisted that I try gliding rather than what I had wanted to do, which was to parachute. A form of aversion therapy? If so, it turned out to be remarkably effective.... more >

Short, Accelerated Week
London-Madrid-Lisbon-Madrid-London