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John Elkington

John Elkington

A world authority on corporate responsibility and sustainable development.

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Two Weeks @Home

John Elkington · 1 September 2019 · Leave a Comment

In Heal’s
Loved this colour, but we’re getting it in dark blue to cope with wear and tear
Elaine and Yinka, after we bought the new sofa for the office
Sapphire Star in Kew Gardens, by Dale Chihuly
Like eels or sperm converging on target: also by Chihuly
Outside the water lily house
Carp, having gobbled a blue damselfly (others of which can be seen in its wake)
One of Gaia’s floral displays in Roland Mouret, in Carlos Place, Mayfair
Ditto
Exhibit in Ashmolean Pompeii exhibition, Oxford

Just coming to the end of a fortnight of working from home, coupled with flashes of staycation. Coincided with figs ripening in the garden. And an opportunity to do things like: finally get a large sofa for our newish Somerset House offices; entertain friends; visit Kew Gardens, to see the Dale Chihuly exhibitions and have lunch overlooking the Palm House; visit Gaia’s dazzling floral display chez Roland Mouret; and trundle across to Oxford to see the Last Supper in Pompeii exhibition at the Ashmolean – and have lunch with Geoff (Lye) and Sarah (Ellis).

On the work front, I went back and forth with Fast Company Press, the publishers of my new book, all going very well; did some outreach for both Volans and for the Business Declares Network, where I am now on the Board; worked with Lisa Goldapple to evolve our film on Green Swans and Regenerative Capitalism, due out later this month; and developed a piece for HBR.org, due out tomorrow, in response to the Business Roundtable’s statement on the future of capitalism.

Perhaps inevitably, another book idea began to bubble, too, spurring a good deal of background research into areas I don’t normally probe.

We also watched a fair amount of television (including glorious programmes like the last of Jim Al-Khalili’s Revolutions series, focusing on telescopes and the last one, on robots and artificial intelligence) and last night finally watched a DVD of Bohemian Rhapsody, utterly joyous.

And I read for England, while feeling increasingly angry about the direction that the Johnson regime is taking the country in. Looks as though I will be out on the streets again soon.

Books I particularly enjoyed, or at least found fascinating, included Diarmid Ferriter’s The Border, Donald D. Hoffman’s The Case Against Reality, and, on the fiction front, and in the sequence in which I read them, Gareth Rubin’s Liberation Square, Joanna Kavenna’s ZED (am minded to buy everything she has ever written) and Pat Barker’s exquisite The Silence of the Girls – the last exquisite in Barker’s use of language, not in subject matter. Intriguing that all three are by the same publisher, Penguin Random House.

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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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