John Elkington

Kondratiev and I

Went across to 76 Portland Place with Sam this evening to give the inaugural ESCP-EAP Environmental Lecture of Business, Sustainability & Technology, sponsored by Sony.  The series is organised by the European School of Management.  The photo above, taken by Sam, shows me looking 150 (still awaiting new glasses after cataract operations) and using a slide showing a version of the economic waves plotted by Nikolai Kondratiev, one of the biggest influences on my thinking in the late 1960s.

 

 

Spent two days in Zurich at first Sustainable Asset Management (SAM) summit, arriving late on 26th – but in time to have a wonderful dinner with Alex Bakarwi and his wife, and Steve Viederman.  Took a couple of walks along Lake Zurich, during one of which I stumbled across a huge statue called Heureka, which rang a bell – since I had been thinking of Eureka! moments.  The summit was SAM founder Reto Ringger’s swan-song – and saw the launch of the tenth annual survey of corporate sustainability.  For downloadable version, try here.  

Solar vessel Heureka 1 Rower Heureka 2 Figure Abduction Stepping stones Green Limousine 1 Green Limo with Steve Viederman Blue light en route to dinner Reto Ringger Legs Me on screen

 

Just back from a couple of days with Rabobank International, in Utrecht.  Part of the discussion can be found here.  With the banking sector in turmoil, this is a bank with its heart very definitely in the right place.

I was in Tokyo on the day that Obama won the election, watching the results come in with people of many nations.  Today I have been in Utrecht as the coverage of the Inaugural Address and parade came through on the BBC and CNN.  Later, I read the speech.  And I found it deeply moving, even if if not yet quite up to the punishing standard – how could it be – of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural.   

It was moving to see mention of whips and hard ploughing, but also – as someone who saw Khe Sahn as a symbol of all that ailed America in the late 1960s and early 1970s – the mention of those who died there.  

Al Gore’s prescient warnings on energy and climate security have clearly been taken on board – and what a delight to see Obama hug not only Gore but also McCain.  This is truly a paradigm shift, in multiple dimensions, in the true sense that I think Thomas Kuhn intended.

A section of the speech that will live on in my memory, partly because of the echoes, but partly because it seeks to redefine the spirit of citizenship, which in some corporate hands has become a fairly dilute wine, was this:

“What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility — a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

This is the price and the promise of citizenship.”

And I can’t think of another Inaugural Address that ended on that phrase that has been so central to the pursuit of sustainability, “future generations”.  Understanding and meeting their needs is likely to be a challenge every bit as demanding as that of tackling secession, the aftermath of slavery, Nazism or Communism – particularly at a time when the economic backdrop gets darker by the day. But President Barack Hussein Obama is, for the first time, a President I feel I share.

  This is the best I can do from the Web on the cover of the Italian version of The Power of Unreasonable People, which arrived in the office today.  Did another signing session for the US edition today, too.  And this evening staggered home with my bag full not only of computers, cables, papers and magazines, but also a copy each of the US, Italian and Japanese editions of the book. More foreign editions are in the pipeline.