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John Elkington

John Elkington

A world authority on corporate responsibility and sustainable development.

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A Willy Wonka Worldview

John Elkington · 14 October 2016 · Leave a Comment

It's a Willy Wonka World
It’s a Willy Wonka World
Mapping tomorrow's technology
Mapping tomorrow’s technology (red splash reminds me of the Tower of London installation mentioned below …)
The notebook where the map was born
The notebook where the map was born
Ole Lund Hansen of the Global Compact, in the week where Bob Dylan's Nobel Prize was announced
Ole Lund Hansen of the Global Compact, in the week where Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize was announced

Early start in 123 Buckingham Palace Road, with PA Consulting and the UN Global Compact. A Management Today article celebrated the “Willy Wonka World” of PA – and the session was certainly full of delights, particularly the beta version of a map of tomorrow’s technology.

Afterwards, I took a cab back to the office, in an attempt to get back quicker for a session on a client. The cab driver had an Armed Forces Fund sticker on the window between the compartments. So I asked whether he had been in the armed forces? The RAF, it turned out, for 22 years as a fitter, leaving in 2006.

We exchanged a series of stories as we headed across to Bloomsbury. Among the ones he told me was of picking up an elderly couple at the Tower of London, when the poppy installation (see below) was on display. They were clinging on to each other like teenagers in love, so he assumed they were married. But it turned out that they were brother and sister – and had been evacuated to different parts of the country during the Blitz.

They explained that they had not seen each other for 75 years, despite searching for one another, and had just stumbled across each other at the Tower, simply by asking each other why they were there, where they were from, and so on. They said they never wanted to be parted again.

He then told a story about someone he used to know who looted a truck of Nazi gold in WWII, bought five cottages on the proceeds, but keep the deeds in a Rose’s chocolate tin and mentioned them to nobody, for fear of detection. It’s amazing where everyday conversations can take you …

The Tower of London installation, 'Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red'. The major art installation named “Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red” consists of 888,246 handmade ceramic poppies, each poppy representing a British fatality during World War I and created by ceramic artist Paul Cummins and stage designer Tom Piper.
The Tower of London installation, ‘Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red’.
It consisted of 888,246 handmade ceramic poppies, each representing a British fatality during World War I – and created by ceramic artist Paul Cummins and stage designer Tom Piper.

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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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