John Elkington

Quite a week. An event on climate change at the Bank of England, organised by Alex Barkawi of the Council on Economic; an off-the-record Accounting for Sustainability (A4S) evening event featuring Bank of England Governor Mark Carney; a delightful dinner at the Frontline Club with Elaine, Gaia, Paul, Hania and Jake; and a speech at the London Roadshow event for the Social Stock Exchange, which seemed to go very well – with some further great news for SSX. And more to come.

Copies of ‘Breakthrough Business Models’ await delegates

Up early to catch a train across to Oxford for the 2016 EMERGE Conference, which I was keynoting – in memory of my fired and colleague Pamela Hartigan. Was delighted to see copies of our latest report, Breakthrough Business Models waiting for the delegates at their places in the Nelson Mandela Lecture Theatre, met some interesting people, did a lunchtime roundtable, and then scooted back to London.

Lovely lunch with Colin le Duc of Generation Investment Management, at Thomas’s inside Burberry’s. He’s off to California. useful discussion of the implications of the Trump regime – and of where we’re heading next with Project Breakthrough. Latest video interview just posted on the web site: Richard Johnson’s interview of Rachel Botsman of Collaborative Consumption.

Great couple of days in Cambridge, where we were co-hosting the first Breakthrough Symposium with the UN Global Compact – as part of their annual series of LEAD company events. Co-facilitated with David Christie of Innovation Arts – and with support from our partners Atlas of the Future and Hüman After All.

Slightly taken aback by the venue, to start with, but in the end it worked well. And the Symposium’s first morning coincided with the announcement of the US presidential elections result.  Our American friends were in total shock, but we kept the juggernaut rolling.

The first morning involved a trip across to PA Consulting‘s R&D site in Melbourne, which covered everything from from drone-monitored farming through to 3D printed biscuits, and was an invigorating start to the process.

Met some great people – and moderated three panels, including people from the Braskem, Covestro, Ellen MacArthur Foundation, Enel, iDisrupted, Provenance, PA Consulting, Singularity University and Tradeshift.

Great visual capture of the event, with a number of rounds of discussion groups on the floor above, but I’ll aim to distil those in a later blog. So more anon.

Here’s a link to my latest GreenBiz column on the recent Commonwealth Secretariat climate change event I attended – and on falling in love in a car park.

Also published today, here’s a Fast Company/Co-Exist review of our work at Volans.