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John Elkington

John Elkington

A world authority on corporate responsibility and sustainable development.

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More of a Godfather …

John Elkington · 19 October 2008 · Leave a Comment

One of the spooky aspects of Googling your own name, as I did this morning in search of a column that appeared in yesterday’s issue of Le Monde, is that you come across references you didn’t know existed.  Today it was a Wikibook chapter on ‘The Ones Who Made History’. 

There I found myself in pole position in a listing of sustainability pioneers, identified as ‘The Father’, with the others being Stephan Schmidheiny (The Visionary), Bill Drayton (The Prophet), Anita Roddick (The Provocateur), Ray Anderson (The Revolutionary), Oded Grajew (The Benchmark), Yves Chouinard (The Explorer) and Antonio Luiz Da Cunha Seabra (The Philosopher). 

While it’s nice to appear in such lists, if someone asked me who I see as the Father of the sustainabilty movement, I would come up with a list of other, stronger candidates for the tag.  They would include Maurice Strong and Max Nicholson.  Success has many fathers, they say, but these two were among those who influenced my choice of priorities and trajectories.  And don’t get me started on mothers.

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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.

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

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