John Elkington
A world authority on corporate responsibility and sustainable development.
Always a delight to be edited by Ted Kinni, whose hand can be seen in this strategy + business column on books I would recommend people new to the sustainability agenda might read. I think it works rather well. Can you guess which books might have made the final cut?
Having spent much of the Easter weekend working on the Breakthrough Innovation Program paper, I suggested we walk across Barnes Bridge. It turned into quite a hike.
Leaving around 12.00, we made our way across the Bridge, through Duke’s Meadows, along the north bank of the Thames to Hammersmith Bridge, and then back along the southern shore to Barnes, arriving home some two-and-a-half hours later.
One of the best walks we’ve done in some time. Weather fitful: bright sun, interspersed with quite high winds. This morning and later, there were bursts of hail. And this morning the newspapers had been turned to paper maché in the porch.
Delightful Saturday afternoon with Hania, Gaia, Paul and Jake at the Royal Albert Hall, seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark with a live orchestra. On the way there, I took Elaine around Imperial College, which she hadn’t been into before. Outside, the Imperial College Chamber Choir was doing a cappella pop songs, which was really quite extraordinarily good. All the while, a small girl keep popping out of the door at the top of the stairs into the Polish Club on the other side of the road.
Then, on Sunday, across to Copenhagen with Richard and Sam for our 3-day session with the UN Global Compact, particularly Ole Lund Hansen, Ingvild Sørensen and Rosedel Davies-Adewebi. Great dinner on the Sunday evening with Ole and Ingvild, at Höst – with extraordinarily good Nordic cuisine.
On Monday evening, I took Susanne Stormer of Novo Nordisk to dinner at Uformel, which she suggested. Also great, as was the Vietnamese restaurant, LêLê, which we ate at on Tuesday evening.
The work went brilliantly well, with the team working very well together. Fascinating session with Erik Rasmussen of Monday Morning, during which I filmed an interview for our Breakthrough Innovation Program. Then I had to unhook first thing on Wednesday morning to fly to Stuttgart for Bosch. Sadly, a trip that should have taken a few hours took over 8 when SAS cancelled my flight, with no explanation.
Great session with Bosch, where I spoke to a couple of hundred senior executives, including a couple of Board members – and then had a fascinating dinner with them afterwards.
Flew back to London the next morning, among other things for a session with Paul Bunje of the X Prize Foundation, which was immensely invigorating. Key input for our UN Global Compact work, with a scouting trip coming up to San Francisco and LA.
Great lunch, too, with Jamie Broderick, Howard Kemp and Giles Sibbald of UBS Wealth Management on Friday, which meant we were a little late back for a session with Cathy Runciman and Lisa Goldapple of Atlas of the Future – but that went wonderfully well, too.
Then yesterday, Saturday, Elaine and I drove across to Little Rissington, to see Pat, Tim and Caroline. He is recovering from broken ribs again, after a fall. An interesting session with iPhones with Gray’s oldest son, variously known as Boo, Aston and Kipp. These phones can do so much wonderful work, with the quality of the video recording for our interviews quite extraordinary by historic standards.
Home lateish, where I watched the episode of The Night Manager I had missed when flying to Denmark last Sunday morning. Stunningly good.
Then this morning I awoke early, in the midst of a dream about interrupting a very senior person who was telling a group of us how to right the world. I banged my hand on the table and thanked him for his provocation, saying that I had cracked the problem. And then, when I woke up, it turned out that a sequence of ideas in my head were actually quite useful. I promptly hurried to capture them on my crack-faced BlackBerry.
Am in Stuttgart, where I did a fascinating session last night for Bosch. Came in, with a few hassles along the way caused by cancelled flight, from Copenhagen. And in that context this article in today’s International New York Times really rang true. A clever play on our heart-strings, perhaps, but a pretty powerful analysis of the realpolitik, too.
A catch-up blog, after a Red Queen month. Highlights of recent weeks include:
Meanwhile the magnolia tree stays in bloom in Bloomsbury, the crocuses are up on the Common, the Egyptian geese on the Pond have produced a large clutch of goslings, the decluttering of 1 Cambridge Road proceeds apace, the EU debate gets into its idiotic stride, and the US elections continue to career towards a possible Trump:Clinton shoot-out.
Took the bike into Cloud 9 Cycles in Bloomsbury a couple of days ago. They warned me that the frame may be unsafe, though I responded that the dent in the cross-bar dates back 15 years to when a car hit me, while the slightly distorted front forks, I think, to the Russian collision 18 months ago, since when I haven’t cycled. Not sure which way this is all going to pan out.