John Elkington

Hare at Royal Academy Cork Street Mews graffito Face tatoo in Bond Street Chinese dancing at British Museum 1 Chinese dancing 2

A day spent prowling shops for light-weight clothes for an impending trip to India – and took back a Panama hat that I have not had long, but which has developed a crack in the crown. Bates replaced it instantly, no questions asked. Marvellous. Then we took in Jieying’s counter-current embroidery for framing at Railing’s in New Cavendish Street. Then on to the British Museum to meet Will Rosenzweig, ahead of supper at the Court Restaurant there. Many things going on at the BM these evening, including an exhibition of Chinese dancing and operatic singing.  Interesting, but hard on the ears. Will gave me a wonderful little kaleidoscope for my birthday, to promote even more colourful visions. Am contemplating having it implanted as a third eye.

Counter-current 1 Counter-current 2 Counter-current 3 Counter-current 4

Last night, in Soseki restaurant, I opened a most extraordinary gift from Zheng Jieying, one of or two Chinese interns at Volans who left us recently to work in New Zealand. She had commissioned a silk embroidery based on my ‘counter-current’ motto, titled ‘Against the Tide’. The artist, based at the Su Embroidery Art Studio in Suzhou, China, was Wang Ling. Astounding.

Jieying explained some of the background in an email this morning: 

The embroidered characters are “counter current”, in Chinese Zhuan calligraphic style.  I did not ask the artist to translate it back to English; but apparently he did, and to a different version. [‘Against the Tide’]

Traditional Chinese embroidery has four styles; one happened to come from my home province Sichuan.  However, I talked to a few artists and could not find what I really liked — until I saw the work of this one based in Suzhou city, close to Shanghai. 

Su embroidery is usually more colourful, but this piece is a little different, although it still took 14 colours (I think, and with threads as thin as 1/16 of the normal) to create the shades around the fish flock.

City skyscape Odd view of Gherkin, but I quite like the accendality of it Hoarding passed en route – combination of setting sun and angles meant I missed the ‘world’ Soseki restaurant, under the skirts of the Gherkin Hania’s photo of fish in Spanish river printed on canvas Emma (Bond), me and Turkish Delight Gassan-no-Yuki sake, Hania, me, Emma Looking for the third eye

A rather unusual start to my sixty-first birthday, with typhoid jab at the surgery, delivered by a trainee – but scarcely felt a thing. Had broken a tooth eating muesli first thing, but managed to enjoy insanely delicious a couple of five honey mangoes Sam had given me last night, with coffee, in the sun. Then made my way across to Richmond in the early afternoon to see dentist. Train late, so had to run in some afternoon heat, so arrived hot and flustered. Different dentist took me in hand, was merrily drilling away, then there was a power cut – probably a combination of everyone turning England-vs-someone World Cup match and their air-conditioning. Got a temporary patch and have to come back tomorrow …

Later in the day, Elaine and I make our way across to the City, walking through their extraordinary streetscapes, with quite a number of raucous England supporters roiling around the streets. Arrived on time at Soseki, a remarkable Japanese restaurant at the foot of the Gherkin. Passing through the roar of the several hundred people drinking around the Gherkin into the calm of Soseki was extraordinary. The food and drink was truly out-of-this-world, including wonderful raw fish.

True, if I were – to quote Gandhi on a billboard we passed by the Gherkin, being the change I want to see in the world, I wouldn’t be eating fish at all, but gave up meat and poultry 35 years ago, and still feel a bit of fish now and then is acceptable. But given the state of the oceans, that may well have to change.

In the process, the girls told me that they had bought me a collection of 13 West Country ciders, including Orchard Pig Cider and Burrow Hill Cider; they gave me Hania’s fish photo she took from me in Spain some years back, this time printed on canvas; Emma (Bond) gave me an amazing collection of Turkish Delights; and I opened a quite extraordinary gift from Zheng Jieying, which I will cover separately.

At the end, Gaia put Elaine, Emma and I into a taxi home, which gave us a wonderful chance to see London’s embankment in the mid-summer evening light. All’s well, as Shakespeare might have said, that ends well.

It’s almost 25 years since we launched SustainAbility, building on the work done by Gro Harlem Brundtland and her World Commission on Environment and Development. At times it seemed as if we were making little progress, or – as today with climate change and the Deepwater Horizon spill – moving backwards. But there is growing evidence that the sustainability agenda is penetrating the C-Suite, a trend that Charmian Love and I took a look at earlier in the year in a series of blogs for Fast Company.

Now a new study fills in some more of the detail. Today’s CEOs are more committed than ever to creating sustainable businesses, according to a new report by Accenture for the UN Global Compact. “Yet the motivator is no longer just social responsibility,” it concludes, but also now “equally about achieving high performance measured in terms such as lower costs, stronger customer relationships and increased revenues. This relentless business focus is a key characteristic of a ‘new era of sustainability,’ one in which environmental, social and corporate governance issues are embedded throughout operations, the supply chain and subsidiaries.”

The conclusions are based on a global survey of more than 750 CEOs and in-depth interviews with 50 of the world’s foremost CEOs in a range of industries and geographies. Among other insights, the survey – largest CEO-based study on sustainability of its kind to date – include the following:

• 93 percent of Global Compact CEOs see sustainability as important to their future success.
• Performance gaps exist between those who agree with the importance of embedding sustainability into the business and those who report success with that objective. Execution is key.
• Re-establishing consumer trust is the immediate issue. Seventy-two percent of executives cite “strengthening brand, trust and reputation” as the strongest motivator for taking action on sustainability issues.
•  Technology, collaboration and a deeper understanding of consumer desires are critical success factors in the coming years.
• The investment community must more effectively factor progress toward sustainability into valuation models.
• CEOs believe that we are moving toward an era in which businesses will no longer focus purely on profit and loss as the primary means of valuation, but rather take into account also the positive and negative impacts on society and the environment.

Fairly busy week so far, driving down yesterday to Highgrove, for a meeting of the alumni of what is now called The Prince of Wales’s Business & Sustainability Programme, developed by the University of Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership. The S-word just adopted in the first case. Terrible jam on the M4 on the way down, where I lost over an hour, because of a fire in a truck of charcoal. Eventually passed the burned-out wreck. Rubbernecking drivers headed eastward had created jams that extended for miles in that direction, too.  The spotlight of the event was on natural capital, Polly Courtice and Jonathon Porritt steered, and Pavan Sukhdev talked about his TEEB study on ecosystem services.

My sense overall, however, was that there were fairly low energy levels – surprising given what has been happening in the Gulf of Mexico.  Maybe it was just the heat? The best speech, by far, was an extempore one from the Prince in the open air. My comment to him: “I should have worn a sombrero.” My scalp seems more sun-sensitive these days – and the sun was pretty intense for England. I then decided to drive across to Little Rissington, to see my parents, which I did, arriving around 18.30. Tim conjured up a bantam egg curry – and it was wonderful to see the three of them.

Then, today, there was a session at McKinsey’s 1 Jermyn Street offices, hosted by Generation Investment Management, and steered by Al Gore and David Blood. The theme was the prospects for – and dynamic of – sustainable capitalism. About 40 people present, but subject to the Chatham House Rule, so limit to what I can say. But one theme that came through both at Highgrove and at today’s event was the need for behavioural and culture change, which are the focus on a new program we are developing at Volans.