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John Elkington

John Elkington

A world authority on corporate responsibility and sustainable development.

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Auctioned

John Elkington · 17 July 2010 · Leave a Comment

Filmed in the garden Filmed in the garden, with Amy and Adrian (who we found through Gaia) Carried Carried Panorama from Docklands Westward panorama from Docklands

I was heavily pollinated by one of the lime trees in the garden at 2 Bloomsbury Place today as we filmed a series of sequences for our Allianz project and for our website. The magnolia is back in flower, to a degree, too, which is lovely.

The team came together several times early in the week to interview potential new members – and there was steady stream of people through the office, including Lily Lapenna of MyBnk and Nelmara Arbex of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). We also made significant progress on a slight restructuring of Volans, which was voted through during a breakfast session to celebrate the beginning of Charmian’s maternity leave.

On Thursday, I had an interesting lunch at the RAC Club, having been offered as a ‘Prize’ at a charity auction at Cranfield University. Lunch hosted by David Grayson, who holds the Chair at the Doughty Centre for Corporate Responsibility.

That night, I was meant to be at a reception at Clarence House, but got distracted at the office and instead trolled along to Fortnum & Mason for the first dinner for those taking part in the new International Integrated Reporting Committee (IIRC), which is being co-evolved by Prince Charles’s Accounting for Sustainability and the GRI.

Perfectly horrid trip to Canary Wharf on Friday morning, for the first IIRC meeting, hosted by HSBC on the 41st floor of their skyscraper in Canada Square. Jubilee Line was shut down when I got to Waterloo – and London Underground staff in combination of baffled, confused and Kafka-esque mood. Misdirected a number of times, it felt as if I were an ant in a maze that kept being tiled by some malevolent power. Eventually made my way via Embankment, Tower Hill and the Docklands Light Railway. Sequence of mishaps continued then a large group of schoolchildren were shoe-horned into the DLR coach, when we eventually managed to find one that wasn’t bursting at the gills, and we were trapped inside – so we couldn’t get off when Canary Wharf eventually hove in view.

Still, a fair few people were late for the meeting, which was held around a boardroom table on which you could easily have landed a 747, with plenty of room for taxying. Around 40 people took part in a very amicable and productive set of discussions – and the view was breath-taking. The Tube worked on the way back to Bloomsbury, but if I had come across anyone responsible for specifying Underground signals, I would have been sorely tempted to drag them to Tyburn in a handcart.

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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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