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John Elkington

John Elkington

A world authority on corporate responsibility and sustainable development.

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First full day at Volans

John Elkington · 8 September 2008 · Leave a Comment

Cycled in, starting out in weather that almost demanded gloves and yet warming up significantly by the time I was beetling through Hyde Park.  My first full day at Volans, at the 2 Bloomsbury Place offices, with a fair old turn-out: Alejandro (Litovsky), Ben (Whitlock), Charmian (Love), Sam (Lakha), Smita (Sircar) and I, most of us beavering away to get the new website ready for the ‘soft launch’ on Wednesday.  

The main room was perfumed by the flowers Charmian had bought this morning to welcome Sam into the new order, an arrangement which included eucalyptus, lilies and the most extraordinary Triffid-like purple flowers, that looked as though they had been shaped in a waffle iron.

Find I am enjoying myself rather a lot.  As I was leaving this evening. Sam gave me a card this evening, by one of Gaia’s favourite artists, David Shrigley, which said: ‘NO SPEED LIMIT ANYMORE.’ Then it said: ‘GO AS FAST AS YOU WANT … LIKE IN GERMANY.’  And I do feel as if my life has shifted into quite another gear.

Arrived home lateish this evening, with a lovely Moon over Hyde Park, then sat down to watch Joanna Lumley in ‘The Land of the Northern Lights’, which screened last night.  Todays reviews gave it a bit of a pasting, as fey, but I found her enthusiasm for the world beyond the Arctic Circle affecting rather than affected, and the sequences of the Northern Lights proper were staggering.

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Introduction

I began this blog with an entry reporting on a visit to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod, on 30 September 2003. The blog element of the website has gone through several iterations since, with much of the older material still available.

Like so many things in my life, blog entries blur the boundaries between the personal and the professional. As explained on this site’s Home Page, the website and the blog are part platform for ongoing projects, part autobiography, and part accountability mechanism.

In addition, my blogs have appeared on many sites such as: Chinadialogue, CSRWire, Fast Company, GreenBiz, Guardian Sustainable Business, and the Harvard Business Review.

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About

John Elkington is a world authority on corporate responsibility and sustainable development. He is currently Founding Partner and Executive Chairman of Volans, a future-focused business working at the intersection of the sustainability, entrepreneurship and innovation movements.

Contact

john@johnelkington.com  |  +44 203 701 7550 | Twitter: @volansjohn

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