John Elkington

After Monday’s Crowd session, I flew to Geneva for the latest Creating Shared Value Advisory Council session with Nestlé in Vevey. Key task was to judge the latest round of the Creating Shared Value Prize. The Council demonstrated crowd intelligence in action.

Ironic, given all of that, that on Thursday evening I then had to publicly debate the question ‘Is CSR Dead?’ (Corporate Social Responsibility, that is) with two of the main champions of Shared Value, Mark Kramer of FSG and the Shared Value Initiative, and Janet Voûte of Nestlé.

This was a Barclays debate, held at The British Library and chaired by Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive of the Royal Society of Arts. With #TeamMark comprising Mark and Janet, #TeamJohn featured Covestro CEO Patrick Thomas and myself.

Just before we headed a cross to the Library, I realised with horror that I had prepared my speech on the wrong assumptions – and was increasingly stressed as we met the Covestro team at the Hoxton Hotel in Bloomsbury, and then took a taxi to the Library (through the stickiest of traffic jams) and then was filmed (with a camera that crashed part-way through).

Once the filming was finished, I holed up and redid the speech on my MacBook, finishing it just in time. When the five of us took to the stage, the mood was light from the start. For the first time, I spoke from a computer on my lap. (All photos of debate used here are by Sam Lakha.)

When Matthew took an initial poll of the audience, it was originally calculated that the room was 51% to 49% favour of CSR being alive, not dead – though the actual vote was a few point higher, to CSR’s advantage.

To be honest, I felt somewhat compromised by the fact that I have argued that CSR is in urgent need of a profound reboot ever since we set up Volans in 2008. Still, I gave it my best – and Patrick proved what an excellent debater he is. The audience participation was terrific, with some extremely thoughtful contributions from the floor.

I was on tenterhooks when the vote came, feeling that the Shared Value agenda must have made up some ground. But when Matthew read out the results from the room and the online audience, I was stunned to hear that the needle had swung to 75% in favour of our position.

It really was a false framing of the bigger agenda, something that both Mark and I had argued from the outset. My argument was that this is no longer a matter of Either/Or, but of Both/And.

I see Shared Value as having a crucial role. But as an approach that stresses Win-Win outcomes, rather than Win-Win-Win (Triple Bottom Line) outcomes, it by definition fails to deal with the Win-Lose challenges (e.g. stranded assets) that are shot through the wider sustainability debate.

Yesterday, Friday, included a session with the Covestro team and a wonderful telephone call with Janine Benyus. Then, today, a box of flowers arrived at our door in Barnes, a huge bouquet from Zheng Jieying in New Zealand, celebrating the debate win. We split Jieying’s bouquet into five vases, three of the images I took for her being shown above.

Wonderful evening with The Crowd at The Art of Change event.

Introduced by Jim Woods and chaired by Catherine Cameron, the event featured three panellists who spoke after my presentation: Richard Gillies, on his lessons from Kingfisher & M&S; Kate Millar, on how the Barclays ‘Lens’ brings society into major business decisions; and Tim Brooks, on the process that led to Lego committing to removing crude-oil-based plastics from its supply chain by 2030.

The first image in my keynote is shown above: it was only after I had dropped it into the slide background that I noticed the pubic hair, but death is no respecter of our vanities.

Then on, with Jim, the speakers and the sponsors, to a delightful dinner at Manicomio City, overlooking the rain sluicing down outside in the silvery darkness of Gutter Lane.

After Sutton Hoo, we headed across to the coast to see Orford. The Castle was very striking and its keep remarkably intact, particularly given that its outer walls and towers have somehow vanished. Then a delightful lunch at the Butley Orford Oysterage.

A test shot of tabasco on one oyster had me in paroxysms at one point, however, a hangover effect of the cold and cough I have been harbouring for the last week.

Sadly, we discovered, Orford Ness had just closed for the year, except for Saturdays. Had wanted to see the relics of the mysterious testing days on the Ness, when it was a Cold War R&D site, as much as the shingle-backed ecosystem. So we wandered along the shore, in my case plucking and chewing marsh samphire, and marshalling the stamina for the drive back to London.

But amazing how much four days away can expand one’s horizons.

Arrived at the Sutton Hoo site half an hour before the museum opened, so walked across to the burial ground – and around. Skies gloriously blue. Looking all the while for the perspective that Ramsay Gibb used when doing a painting of the area that hangs in our home. And found it.

Delightful place, despite the history of gibbets and executions nearby. Had seen the Sutton Hoo Hoard in the British Museum a number of times, so had long wanted to visit the site.

Also read The Dig, by John Preston, some years ago. Interesting to see that Cate Blanchett, one of my favourite actresses, has been interested in playing Edith Pretty in a possible film. I live in hope …

Loved the evidence of the Landgirls who stayed in the house during WWII, including carved declarations of love on one of the fireplaces and woodworm-like holes in the wooden panelling, apparently from games of darts.

The Sutton Hoo museum itself is brilliantly done, centred around a reproduction of part of the main ship burial. While the exhibits on sword-making and the world-famous helmet were a joy, the piece that really connected with me was the reconstruction of a maple lyre, with its case lined in beaver fur.

Would love to have heard – and understood – the songs of the time, at the time. On the strength of that, I bought the book A Departed Music: Old English Poetry, by Walter Nash. Something to read as winter draws in.

Arrived in Woodbridge to stay at Melton Hall B&B, but decided to visit the tide mill en route. Stunningly beautiful weather and delightful volunteers showed us around the mill. Have been interested in tide mills since I wrote Sun Traps: The Renewable Energy Forecast for Pelican Books in the early 1980s. At the time, we visited the tide mill at Carew, Pembrokeshire.