John Elkington

Friday, February 29, 2008

Leapfrogging on Leap Year Day

Arrived back this morning, Leap Year Day as Google informs us, from Washington, D.C., where we made a number of leapfrogging announcements at our conference at The Willard Hotel on Wednesday. Among them, SustainAbility will this year set up a Foundation and an operation in India, both developments that I had long dreamed of. The third announcement, though we aren’t going in to any great detail as yet – partly because we are still developing our plans – was that from April I will be launching forth with a new organisation, Volans Ventures, with the other founding partners being Pamela Hartigan, Kevin Teo and Sophia Tickell.

Some of the background can be found at http://www.sustainability.com/insight/article2.asp?id=1338. An extract from our press release:

[…]

Pointing to findings from the just released GlobeScan/SustainAbility survey of active sustainability practitioners, [SustainAbility CEO] Mark Lee emphasized that “approaches from the past will not help much with tomorrow’s challenges. We need new business models, new ideas, and new thinking. New forms of collaboration are already emerging within leading companies as they find ways to turn risk into opportunity and generate value for both shareholders and stakeholders.”

Stressing the critical need to drive step change with business through markets, Elkington spoke of the growing urgency “to scale solutions rapidly so we bridge – and then begin to close – the growing global divides that threaten the economic and social well-being of current and future generations. The risks are now beginning to be recognized – our challenge in the next decade is to ensure that the opportunities are just as clear to those who run, invest in, work for, buy from and invest in business.”

SustainAbility and Volans Ventures anticipate working collaboratively on select research projects to leverage their dual capabilities, experience, and orientation to risk. Additionally, SustainAbility and Volans will share strategic resources, key people will have joint appointments, and both firms share the same core ambition to quickly advance the sustainability agenda.

[ENDS]

A few final ruminations. The name Volans comes from the Latin volans, for flying or flying thing, as in Pisces volans, or flying fish. When I was prowling around the Internet this evening, searching once again for images of flying fish, I came across two which literally took my breath away.

The first is this, of a galleon during Spanish Main days, the skies full of piscatorial aerobatics:

The second is by Andrea Offermann (http://www.andreaoffermann.com/), done for the book The Life of Pi, which – if memory serves – was discovered at Canongate by a friend of Gaia’s, Francis Bickmore:

Both images capture my sense of the weird and wonderful future we are about to leap into. 

Ode to Unreasonable People

The reviews of The Power of Unreasonable People are coming in thick and fast now, but Ode magazine (http://www.odemagazine.com/p/about) is, I think, the first to review the book back-to-back with Muhammad Yunus’s new book, Creating a World Without Poverty.

I quite like their fist Earth illustration – at one stage, in the early 1990s I collected images that played games with the image of Earth, from advertising, campaign posters and the like, intending to do a book, but never quite got round to it.

D.C.

Some more photographs from some of last week’s sessions in Washington, D.C.

Flowers in the Willard Hotel lobby – the word ‘lobbying’ was coined in the Hotel

Mark prepares alongside a poster for one of our reports of yore

Jonathan (Halperin) and Mark (Lee) keep seats warm for filming

Ditto

Exhibits at Georgetown University, where I did a session on social entrepreneurship

Ditto

View from seminar room window

Sunday, February 24, 2008 

Another NYT mention of our book

A nice mention of The Power of Unreasonable People in the New York Times can be found at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/24/business/24social.html?ex=1204520400&en=d4aed6ababf81903&ei=5070&emc=eta1.

Saturday, February 23, 2008 

The Wallacespace Six

Spent three days this week (20th-22nd) at the Wallacespace in Covent Garden, with six members of the team for a new venture I’m working on. Dinner on second night on the top floor of Waterstone’s, Piccadilly, with – among others – Bunker Roy of Barefoot College. The formal launch for the new venture won’t be until the Skoll World Forum next month, though we are trailing it at a session SustainAbility is holding at The Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., this coming week. More anon.

Auspicious number for our meeting room

Good to go

Feet first into the future

Quiet moment

Kevin and Pamela

Point made

Pamela and Sophia

Cookie pause

Paws and cookies

Quiet corner

Other news

En route to dinner

Bunker Roy

Work in progress

Sam and Kevin

Kevin and Sophia

Screen shot

Snap!

Spring

Thursday, February 21, 2008 

A Specter over Detroit

Interesting to see myself quoted in a splendidly long article on carbon footprinting in The New Yorker, at http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/02/25/080225fa_fact_specter?printable=true. Michael Specter (who I liked enormously when he came into our London office) writes very well and is accurate in terms of what I said. But, as ever, some of the context is left out.

SustainAbility, for example, continues to work with Ford, but I haven’t in quite some time. I do indeed think that much of Detroit is doomed, but I really wouldn’t single out Ford ahead of other US manufacturers as particularly vulnerable. Each of these companies is on something of a roller-coaster ride and, as with Chrysler in the past, it’s often a matter of timing and luck (good or bad) as to whether a particular company goes down, stumbles on or recovers.

The problem that companies like Ford and GM face is that they are long-rooted incumbents, with deeply entrenched operations and mind-sets. But we are seeing Ford experimenting with some fascinating projects focusing on sustainable mobility in cities Sao Paulo, so who knows?

Monday, February 18, 2008 

Hurricane resurrected

Chris Banyai-Riepl painted the Me-109 of my father’s nemesis Helmut Wick (see blog entry for Sunday June 25 2006), and now Robert Gretzyngier has turned his brushes to the Hurricane Tim was flying when his path (we now believe) crossed Wick’s in 1940.

Sunday, February 17, 2008 

Hill House

Drove down to Little Rissington yesterday afternoon with Gaia and Hania, arriving to find the house bursting at the seams. Odd to see various Cotswold stone walls in the village doing the same, including part of the wall of the lower garden, towards the church. Luckily, it burst inwards rather than out. Saw another in the village in a similar state on our way out this afternoon to Burford.

Much comment as Gaia, Hania and Pat read Elaine’s account of her somewhat erratic career, 1968-1977, due to appear on her website, itself slated to launch later in the month. Ranges from Lord Lucan to Antonioni, via Hammer Horror Films and the Playboy Club. The stars were brilliantly clear last night as we said goodbye to parents of Marina, one of Caroline’s most-painted models. This morning, no surprise, there had been a hard frost. When Dad cut a full stalk of Brussels-sprouts and brought them into the kitchen to accompany Hania’s extraordinary pie, it took a fair while for the sprouts to defrost. Should have gone for a walk. Didn’t.

Chimney

Distant frost in lower garden

Blue chairs

Hania

Pat reading Elaine’s reminiscences of work, 1968-77

Marina in style

Saturday, February 16, 2008

 

Poverty warps brains

In the next phase of my working life, I plan to focus even more urgently on the nexus of challenges at the interface between the areas flagged by my 1994 formulation of the triple bottom line, ‘People, Planet & Profit’ (the 3Ps).

Fascinating to see in today’s Financial Times an article on recent research showing that early poverty impairs the development of the human brain, locking in a range of social and health problems. Interesting, too, that the same paper carries a report on Muhammad Yunus’s Grameen Bank making its first microfinance loans in, of all places, New York City. As the FT puts it, “the bank’s entry into the US, its first in a developed market, comes after mainstream banks’ credibility has been hit by the mortgage meltdown and many people are turning to fringe financial institutions offering loans at exorbitant rates.” Once again, Grameen is helping the iron grip of poverty on the poor.
 

Spineless menace

One of the most painful experiences of my entire life came off the Greek island of Skaithos in 1970. Swimming over quite a distance back from an offshore islet, I suddenly felt I had been kicked in the chest by a mule. The aftershock was like a combination of an electrical and chemical burn. Looking down, as I tried to regain my breath, a saw a tiny purple jellyfish floating away. Now the Mediterranean is being plagued by a spectrum of the blooming things, a symptom – some scientists believe – of the rapidly deteriorating health of the world ocean. A key cause, it is thought, is overfishing. More at http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/the-spineless-menace-jellyfish-overwhelm-the-sea-783036.html. 

Hoax and Prairie Home Companion

Am scrambling to write a number of things, most particularly the latest report for our Skoll Program. yesterday, for example, kicked off with a session in Barnes with Rupert Bassett, Maggie Brenneke and Alexa Clay on the structure and design of the report. Some really quite intriguing ideas surfaced over coffee and croissants.

Somehow, however, Elaine and I have managed to squeeze out time to watch two films from 2006 in the past week – and both have had me beside myself with joy. The first was Hoax (http://imdb.com/title/tt0462338/), about the spoof biography of Howard Hughes, which delightfully – among many other joys – includes a pair of Creedence Clearwater Revival tracks.

Then last night we finally got around to watching Prairie Home Companion (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0420087/) – and I was completely blown away. It took me a while to realise the full import of the angel’s appearance in the final frames, however. I want the cast version of Red River Valley/In the Sweet By and By played at my funeral, please.

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

LEAD in a brown-bag

Fascinating brown-bag lunch today with LEAD International and much of SustainAbility’s London team. More on LEAD at http://www.lead.org/. They were kicked off in 1991 by a huge grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, which at the time was run by Peter Goldmark, later a member of SustainAbility’s Faculty. We are looking for ways to overlap and better use our networks.

LEAD set up

The LEAD story

JP perplexed by an illuminated Simon Lyster

Afterwards 1

Afterwards 2

Kim manages to spill coffee exactly on my image in today’s Guardian 

Let’s be unreasonable about this

A piece of mine on the theme of the new book appeared in The Guardian today – and can be viewed at http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/feb/13/socialenterprises?gusrc=rss&feed=society, albeit without the ‘Hell’s Social Entrepreneurs’ cartoon that accompanied the article in the paper. Rajni Bakshi also had a piece on the book published in LiveMint.com in India, owned by the Wall Street Journal, at http://www.livemint.com/2008/02/12231129/Power-of-unreasonable-people.html.

Sunday, February 10, 2008

Missing Reindeer

A chauffeur-driven car was waiting for me a few days back when I arrived at Oslo airport, in driving snow. We headed north for three hours, at a fair click on fairly hazardous roads, at one point seeing a massive road-train that had lost traction and ended up on its side in the ditch, like a road-weary line of elephants. We also saw a pair of cows madly racing along the road amongst the snow flurries, but I missed the reindeer that apparently wandered past the Sanderstolen hotel where I was due to speak at a conference organised by the Energy Policy Foundation of Norway. The theme: Sustainable and Secure Energy (http://www.epf.no/).

Apart from a 1.5 hour session which I had to myself, I also appeared on a panel as the event wound towards a conclusion, moderated by Ed Crooks, Energy editor at the Financial Times. Also on the panel were people like Andris Piebalgs (EU Energy Commissioner), Helge Lund (President and CEO, StatoilHydro), Graeme Sweeney (Executive Vice President, Future Fuels and CO2, Shell) and Rex Tillerson (Chairman and CEO, ExxonMobil). Ended up finding Tillerson quite engaging, but he and I locked horns a numbers of times, both in my session and during the panel session. Somewhat reminiscent of those antlered beasts I hadn’t seen, I suppose.

Flew back to Oslo in a small plane on Friday night, arriving after midnight to find the hotel had no registration in my name – though finally managed to find somewhere to spend the night. Then back to a brilliantly sunny London on Saturday afternoon, where I found that my online bidding via a U.S. escrow account for a website I desperately need for a new venture I am involved in had finally been successful. The site had previously been held by a man in St. Petersburg with the memorable surname Nabokov, who may – or may not – be the first cybersquatter I have encountered. But all’s well that ends well, as they say. More anon.

Wednesday, February 06, 2008 

Sanderstolen

Arrived earlier this evening in Sanderstolen, Norway, after a three-hour drive north from Oslo – in fairly heavy snow. Despite the Mercedes suspension, the ice-packed road surfaces meant that at times it was like being on a PowerPlate vibrator. Highlights along the way included two escaped cows bowling along the road in the dark and a huge road-train that had just slid off the road into the ditch and was lying on the snow like a herd of elephants having a siesta.

Still fighting the ‘flu, despite having come to the end of the antibiotics I was prescribed in Davos. And only half way through a week that feels a month long already, starting on Monday morning wih an interesting session with Colin Le Duc at Generation Investment Management and then a SustainAbility Board meeting yestereday, both exploring paths into the future. And then we heard yesterday that we have probably landed a very challenging project with the World Energy Council, a project which (if successful) is bound to get under some folks’ skins – but that has always been a key part of what we do when we are in change-driving mode.

Friday, February 01, 2008

Hanging by a Thread

The last in the short series of Davos-inspired blog entries by Sophia Tickell and I has just been posted on the SustainAbility website at http://www.sustainability.com/insight/article2.asp?id=1332.

Davos: Ends and Beginnings

A summary of some my headline conclusions on Davos 2008 can be found at the openDemocracy website at http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/globalisation/davos_2008_the_hydra_s_year.

Wednesday, January 30, 2008 

CIO Insight

Interesting to see how media is slicing and dicing the book, even before it’s published. Here’s a link to an excerpt of our profile of Mitch Kapor, who I saw again in Davos a few days back – in this case aimed at the IT sector, particularly Chief Information Officers. See http://www.cioinsight.com/c/a/Books/How-QTEUnreasonableQTE-People-Can-Improve-IT/

Monday, January 28, 2008

DJSI and Sustainability Yearbook 2008

En route home from Davos, Elaine and I arrived in Zurich yesterday afternoon – and had dinner with Alex Barkawi, his wife Kecia, Reto Ringger and his wife, John Prestbo of Dow Jones and Steve Viederman, a long-time friend and colleague. Reto is CEO at Sustainable Asset Management (SAM) and Alex runs their Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes side (http://www.sustainability-indexes.com/). Then today, Elaine and I met Peter (Zollinger) for an extended hot chocolate in a wonderful little cafe in the city, the Cafe Schwarzenbach. Next Peter and I headed off in bright sunshine on the tram to SAM, for a team brown-bag lunch and a meeting of the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes advisory board.

SAM have just launched their Sustainability Yearbook 2008, which is well worth a look. The Yearbook is the world’s most comprehensive reference work for assessing exchange-listed companies according to their triple bottom line performance. Only the best 15% of the companies in 57 industry sectors are included. For the first time SAM, has developed a classification system that breaks down the leading companies into SAM Gold, Silver and Bronze classes.

Another balancing act: On SAM’s doorstep

Sunday, January 27, 2008 

Davos 2008

Elaine and I have just come down the mountain to Zurich, by train, after spending the previous week first in Zurich at the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship summit – and then at the 2008 World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos (http://www.weforum.org/en/index.htm). Because of IT challenges, I have been filing blog entries erratically, with a series of three due to appear on the SustainAbility website at www.sustainability.com/saatdavos, with commentaries by Sophia Tickell.

Flying fish spotted in Davos

Since I have blogged fairly extrensively for SustainAbility’s website (http://www.sustainability.com/insight/article2.asp?id=1305) – and have a piece on Davos 2008 appearing shortly on the openDemocracy site, which I will provide a link to here when it is posted – what follows is simply a sequence of some of the images that struck me during the summit.

Waiting for Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google, Larry Brilliant of Google.org and Tom Friedman

Bono and Mary Robinson embrace after Al Gore’s sermon on the market opportunities in global warming

Bono commented on venture capitalist John Doerr’s shoes – so here they are

Part of a line of totem poles in the WEF annual meeting reception area

Ad for World Food Programme en route to a Nike lunch focusing on the plight of girls

During the session I moderated in the WorkSpace for consumer sector CEOs

Detail of scribing during the session

I told delegates that the WorkSpace was like an olive oil press – and they were the fruit

Action now!

Reed Paget of Belu (UK Social Entrepreneur of the Year) stoops to confer

Aftermath of protests behind the Congress Centre

Spotted in the WorkSpace: the symbolism of Pisces volans will become clear later in the Spring

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Co-authors

Here’s a picture that Doris Michaels, our literary agent based in New York (http://www.dsmagency.com), took of Pamela and I at the Schwab Summit earlier today.

Two exhausted co-authors brought to book 

Schwab Foundation summit

We arrived in Davos today, by train from Zurich – where we had been attending what may prove to be the last summit meeting of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship entrepreneurs. Held in the Swiss Re Ruschlikon complex outside Zurich, overlooking the lake, the event was organised very differently this year, with much more active engagement of the entrepreneurs and other participants. Wonderful gathering of the tribes. On the first evening Elaine, Sophia (Tickell) and I had dinner with Barbara Fiorito, who used to chair Oxfam in the US, and from that point on it was a veritable blizzard of conversations and connections. As the event wound down and it was announced that Pamela was standing down as Managing Director of the Foundation, she deservedly received a standing ovation – but, sadly, by that time we were already on the train to Davos.

All a bit of a blur for Freeplay’s Rory Stear

What’s the collective noun for glasses?

Elim Chew: Director, Social Innovation Park, Singapore) and Elaine

Ricardo (Young da Silva) of Instituto Ethos, Brazil

Pamela in full flow

Sunday, January 20, 2008 

Expecting to Fly

Spent much of yesterday with Craig and Rachel Ray, working on the impending revamp of this website.  Was busy well after midnight trying to find suitable photos for the section headings and so on.  Just as well, because BA sent a text message to say that our flight to Zurich tomorrow (today) had been cancelled, so had to find an alternative in short order.  Probably linked to the crash at Heathrow on the 17th, something none of us should have been surprised by.  The recent safety record of the major airlines has been extraordinary, but the risks are always there.
As we prepare to fly, it’s an uneasy thought that statisticians note that rare events cluster.  And with the flight lanes in to LHR passing directly over our home, I have often visualised what would happen if one of those things decided to pay a visit here.  When we first moved here, it was more a question of kerosene being dumped in large quantities over the washing – and, closer in, where the wheels came down, frozen bodies falling out of wheel-wells.  Heathrow has always been a difficult neighbour and its impending expansion, which I voted against in the recent public consultation, can only make things worse.

Friday, January 18, 2008

Visiting Professor

So, now I’m a Visiting Professor – at the Doughty Centre for Corporate Responsibility at Cranfield University’s School of Management (http://www.som.cranfield.ac.uk/som/research/centres/ccr/).

Thursday, January 17, 2008 

Signing On

Ori

Now that copies of The Power of Unreasonable People have arrived in our London office, I have been doing a marathon signing session – and Ori (Chandler) and Sam (Lakha) have been sending the mailmen away laden to the gunnels (or gunwales). The pictures above and below were taken by Sam during the process, the last of which is an acknowledgement of where all this product comes from.

One of many packs

Can I plead RSI?

Arboreal neighbour

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Sir John Harvey-Jones

Returned from Washington to find the news that Sir John Harvey-Jones had died. It’s a long time since I last met him, having first interviewed him for ICI Magazine in the mid-1980s, when he was Chairman of ICI. He was certainly a breath of fresh air. But I also included some of the same interview in my book The Green Capitalists, published in 1987 – the year he retired from ICI. In retrospect, reading back through that section of the book, it’s interesting to see how even he was a captive at the time of pretty standard (and pretty defensive) industry views on issues like acid rain and ozone depletion.

The world was about to shift on its axis, however. With the Antarctic Survey discovering the Antarctic ‘Ozone Hole’ in 1985 and a UK Friends of the Earth campaign against CFCs having a major impact on public opinion in 1987, the ground was well prepared for our first green consumer campaign in 1988. It always struck me that ICI was full of great ideas for new, greener technologies, a number of which we spotlighted when I was a judge with initiatives like the Pollution Abatement Technology Awards (PATAS) and the Better Environment Awards for Industry (BEAFI), both hosted by the RSA. But precious few of those ideas ever made it through to the market.

Ironically, it was a chance comment from Mike Flux, ICI’s Group Environment Adviser at the time of the the ‘Green Designer’ exhibition at the Design Council in 1986, which I helped organise, that triggered the thinking behind The Green Consumer Guide. Mike noted that it was all very well for environmentalists like me to urge ICI to produce more environment-friendly technologies and products, but experience had shown that no-one wanted to buy them. OK, I thought, let’s mobilise the consumer, a phrase I coined for the Design Council exhibition, and off the green consumer rocket went.

Friday, January 11, 2008 

World Entrepreneurship Summit 2008

Once I got back from Washington yesterday morning, I headed home to recover a bit from my aerial coughing, though that had been much less bad than it might have been becayuse I slept soundly. Then later in the day I headed in to the World Entrepreneurship Summit (http://www.wes08.net/) in the QEII conference centre, Westminster, to absorb some of the atmosphere and key issues ahead of my plenary presentation today.

When I took the stage, after the event got off to a late start, partly because of rain, I started with two rather startling images from the world of StarTrek, noting that making one’s away around the QEII centre in search of breakout sessions was a bit like trying to find one’s way around some abandoned space hulk, where you would look through internal portholes and see small groups of people earnestly debating (as perhaps they had already done for years, decades or even generations) questions around whether social enterprise is different from ordinary enterprise. Someone from the UN had told me yesterday that as far as he was concerned anything that was an enterprise and employed people was a social enterprise. So, I wondered aloud, did the Mafia fit the bill?

My second USS Enterprise picture is below – and I used it to look forward to the day when we could use something like Google Earth not just to spot concentrations of humanity or sources of greenhouse gas emissions, but to map the intensity of entrepreneurial effort on the great challenges of the new century.

I was then asked to join the following panel discussion, chaired by Vicky Pryce, Chief Economic Adviser at BERR and Joint Head of the UK Government Economic Services. The other panellists were George Polk (Founder, The Cloud and The Catalyst Project), Herta von Stiegel (Executive Chairman, StarGate Capital), Andrew Bainbridge (CEO, Bank Muscat International), George Dragnich (Director, Office of Economic & Development Affairs, US State Department) and Max Mickelsson from Microsoft. My mmemory is that the panel really caught fire and was a pleasure to be part of. Certainly as people wound out to coffee I overheard some very positive commentary.

Towards the end of the session, I took the opportunity to end a series of points by proposing a vote of thanks to Rebecca Harding, who has been the driving force behind WES – and there was a resounding outbreak of applause. She has been at least as ill as I, but soldiered on. True, much needs to be done to turn the summit into something really worthy of the name, but the vessel’s now well under way.

Brainstorm

Walking back around Barnes Pond on my way home from the World Entrepreneurship Summit, having extracted myself early because of my gathering flu symptoms, I found my brain playing havoc with various things it encountered – including the results of a recent storm. Odd how the mind begins to see the world in altered states. Everything starts to look slightly numinous – something Van Gogh caught with his study of a working man’s boots. Things begin to glow, as did this bench – though the light here was silvery, sold, wintry. The brancing patterns put me in mind of the blood supply to the brain.

Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Library of Congress

What a treat. Jonathan Halperin had fixed me up with a guided tour of the Library of Congress this morning. On arrival, I was taken under the comforting, highly informed wing of Madonna Robins and steered around this extraordinary institution. Fascinating wander around the ‘Exploring the Americas’ exhibition, with some amazing early maps of the Americas (http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/earlyamericas/).

Then I was handed over to Abby Yochelson for a tour of the Reading Room, plus – when I mentioned an interest – a visit behind-the-scenes to the old card index system, inevitably, thankfully, replaced by computers. She had a brief on my writing career to date, with 16 books included in their reference system and the latest, The Power of Unreasonable People, already on their radar screen. Still you would need a bevy of supercomputers to keep track of such outputs in the midst of the tsunami of new titles they receive each year.

Library of Congress 1: Knowledge lights the way

Library of Congress 2: Raising a torch

Library of Congress 3: Thomas Jefferson contemplates loss of much of his library, gifted to the Library, in a fire in 1851 (http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/jefflib.html)

Library of Congress 4: Uplifting

Lbrary of Congress 5: Card index – from Horror Tales to Horse Pulling

Library of Congress 6: Paws for thought in ‘Exploring the Americas’ exhibition

Tuesday, January 08, 2008 

Fast Company Awards

Spent a glorious evening, albeit on cough sweets, at the Fast Company awards ceremony at the Westin Washington. SustainAbility won one of the 2008 Social Capitalist Awards (see http://www.fastcompany.com/social/ and, for my perspective on all of this, http://www.fastcompany.com/social/2008/articles/john-elkington.html).

Our table at the awards ceremony had been organised by Jonathan Halperin of our DC office – and I sat next to Herve Houdre, general manager of the famous Willard Hotel. He was the man who, after breakfast at The Willard, steered me across the road to a nearby Borders bookstore to ensure I tracked down a copy of an extraordinary biography of Benjamin Franklin, an early – and almost definitive – example of a social entrepreneur. The book: Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, by Walter Isaacson (Simon & Schuster, 2003). Made sure Herve got a signed advance copy of The Power of Unreasonable People this evening, in which he is credited in the Acknowledgements. Because Pamela was there, too, she signed also. (She and I had done a twin-header presentation of the book earlier in the day at the Fast Company conference that preceded the dinner.)

Some of the things Franklin did were not-for-profit, some for-profit. And it was significant that tonight’s awards went largely to not-for-profit social enterprises, but with – for the first time – a separate category of for-profit ‘social capitalists’. Alongside SustainAbility, and because of the tyranny of the alphabet I came last in a sequence of some 50 award recipients, were nine other for-profits: Better World Books, Developing World Markets, Domini Social Investments, Equal Exchange, Herman Miller, New Leaf Paper, Organic Family of Farms, Seventh Generation and ShoreBank. What truly glorious company to be in!

Sunday, January 06, 2008 

Of planes and adrenaline

Arrived at Terminal 4 shaken, stirred and almost beside myself on adrenaline breakdown compounds today after a breakneck trip around the M25 in a taxi, having been caught in a jam on an M4 exit road for 20-25 minutes. Got to the desk just in time to be told that if I had got there just 5 minutes earlier, my luggage would have got on board. Typically, as I headed home the road closure signs on the exit spur had been removed. Still, because I was meant to be flying business – thanks to a top-up with Air Miles – I can fly tomorrow at the same time.

The need to take account of unforeseen wrinkles is one I have to constantly re-learn. One of my worst flights was to Australia some years back, when I got on the wrong plane. Turned out I had tickets on two planes leaving at same time for Oz, one to Sydney and one to Melbourne. Meant to be on the latter, I found myself on the former – and airborne. The slight wrinkle here was that I was meant to be having an hour or two of rest in Melbourne ahead of a major speech, but had no idea how I was going to get from Sydney to Melbourne in time. In the event, I found a connection and got to the ventue just in time to take the stage. Am very much enjoying Craig Venter’s extraordinary book A Life Decoded at the moment, much of the early part of which is on his research on adrenaline receptors. My receptors must have been in overdrive that day.

Saturday, January 05, 2008 

Reptile on BBC Today Program

Relatively early start, at least on a Saturday, when I’m likely to feel particularly reptilian in the morning. And ironically, given the subject I was to talk about, I was picked up by an ultra-smart BMW early this morning to be whisked across to BBC for an interview on rising oil prices – alongside Tony Juniper of Friends of the Earth. Unfortunately, the interview didn’t really engage some of the issues I had discussed the previous day with the researcher, but my sense is that rising energy prices are a necessary condition (and a catalyst) for a profound restructuring of the global economy – as argued in my 2001 book, The Chrysalis Economy. My problem is that I try to answer the questions asked, rather than driving my own agenda from the outset.

A central idea in that book was that the first 30 years of the new century would see the same sort of processes in the economy as you see in a chrysalis, where a resource-intensive, environmentally damaging organism (the caterpillar) goes in and – after a period of total meltdown, where the old organs are pretty much liquidised to provide the nutrients needed to build the new – a much more sustainable organism (the butterfly) emerges. As we enter recession, I see this as the threshold of a fundamental reworking of the economic order. Perhaps not surprisingly, when I attempted an economics degree in the late 1960s, the two economic thinkers I found most interesting were Nikolai Konradtiev and Joseph Schumpeter …

Nor will all of this be uniformly good news in terms of sustainable development. Instead, we will see some extremely worring trends in terms of political economy. The news yesterday that Gazprom is trying to gain access to Nigerian oil and gas reserves has to be seen as bad news by western companies that have argued they can’t stop flaring in short order, since that is part of what Gazprom now seems to be offering.

Whatever the facts of the matter, no-one who has seen BRIC energy companies at close quarters can be under any illusion that they will get anywhere near competing with western companies on humans rights and environmental priorities. For that to happen, we need a sustained 15-20 year campaign focusing on them – and keeping them under the same sort of concerted pressure that has persuaded their western counterparts to at least begin the processes of change. The work of the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre is one part of that, but we need to massively scale up our efforts in this area. 

Backing Obama

Don’t quite know what to make of his chances of bringing real change if he finally made it to the White House, but the news today of Barack Obama’s win in Iowa feels like a huge shot in the arm. Have long felt that a Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton outcome would not only take us back to the Roman Empire but also sound the death knell for something quintessential in American politics. Suddenly, there’s a sense of new shoots, new potential, new hope – all the more important given what has been happening in places like Pakistan and Kenya.

Having spent part of today in the East End of London, I’m even more persuaded of the need for the broad mass of people to believe in a better future – and for political leaders to make it possible for ordinary people to believe that they can make real changes for the better in their own lives and conditions. But, even more importantly, there is a need – something Obama has publicly acknowledged – to “renew America’s moral position in the world.” In that respect, I find it simply astounding how far that great country has fallen in recent years.

Friday, January 04, 2008 

Les Echos

Delighted that we got an article into the French financial daily Les Echos today, on the subject of responsible supply chain management. I wrote it with my SustainAbility colleague Jean-Philippe Renaut and spotlighted the work of EcoVadis (http://www.ecovadis.com/).

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

Year of the Frog

Having been switched on to wildlife and environmentalism in large part by amphibians in Northern Ireland – and having spent recent years in a growing state of anxiety about the impact of the chytrid fungus on amphibians – see 4 February 2006 entry (http://johnelkington.com/weblog/http://johnelkington.com/january-2008/) in this Journal – I was pleased to see in today’s Times (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3118736.ece) that 2008 has been declared the International Year of the Frog.

Weirdly, when asked for a US survey of environmentalists for my favourite animals only yesterday, this was what I (very selectively) fired back:

Q3: Favourite animal?

“Can’t do just one …

– Mammals: hares, meerkats, lemurs, dolphins, humpback whales – indeed more or less any whales
– Birds: The red kites that have been reintroduced in the west of England
– Amphibians: frogs, toads, salamanders
– Reptiles: chameleons
– Fish: The flying fish
– Insects: the honeybee and the dragonfly …”

In any event I, for one, will be supporting the Amphibian Ark campaign (http://www.amphibianark.org/yearofthefrog.htm) to save frogs, toads, salamanders and the like.

Monday, December 31, 2007

THE NEXT BIG THING: FROM CSR TO SD?

I was particularly struck by this piece on the ‘Next Big Thing’ in today’s Financial Times:

Goodbye to corporate social ­respons­ibility?

Never mind rising sea levels: the waves of cynicism washing over corporate executives as they push their CSR agendas promise to become life-threatening in 2008. In the inevitable life cycle of management fads CSR is now heading for the exit. Customers are generally unconvinced by the hype. And “social responsibility” was always too flimsy a concept to gain serious traction with business leaders.

That gives us a clue as to the identity of the next Big Thing in management: sustainability. Unlike CSR, this concept has some meat and commercial potential to it. Innovations that make money while helping to reduce carbon emissions are actually worth pursuing. So here’s one further prediction for next year: the urgent rebranding to be carried out by all those CSR consultancies, which will be replacing the old acronym with the more contemporary “sustainability” label.

Stefan Stern.

For more: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/eb14b4b2-b6fe-11dc-aa38-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1

Tuesday, December 25, 2007

POISONED

Thundering rain in the night, continuing as I woke to Christmas 2007. We had decided not to travel, but instead to catch our breath before 2008. Gaia is heading off to Cornwall to make a film, Hania to Transylvania, so we’re on our own – though we had a rare dinner party on the 22nd with the likes of Adam Ford (who was vicar at St Paul’s Girls’ School when G and H were there) and his partner Ros, Ritu Khanna from SustainAbility, Raj Thamotheram of AXA and David Grayson, now of Cranfield University. Joyous evening, then went out to a nearby drinks party on 23rd with Penny Egan (who I first knew when she ran the RSA) and her family.

Otherwise we have been reading and watching films. One of the books I’m reading at the moment is Michael Chabon’s extraordinary The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. Had read The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier & Clay when Tom Delfgaauw gave it to me some years ago, but even so have been surprised to be ensnared – though it took me 196 pages to really get into it. Truly an alternate universe.

Meanwhile one of the books Elaine gave me today was Christopher Reid’s collection of the letters of Ted Hughes. Oh dear, couldn’t help myself. Knowing he had written me into a poem that The Times ran in 1987 when he was Poet Laureate, and which subsequently appeared in his Collected Poems (http://johnelkington.com/profile-ted-hughes.htm), I confess that I took a look around to see if I appeared in any of his letters. And yes I do, in a letter to Michael Hamburger dated 12 September 1987 (pages 538-539). Fills in more of the background to his sending Margaret Thatcher a copy of The Poisoned Womb. Weird: it’s a bit like finding your likeness in an underground cave painting from a bygone era. Not sure the typo “Poisonned” was his or his editors at Faber & Faber, but really who cares?

Friday, December 21, 2007 

LIVE MINT

My latest column on India’s LiveMint can be found at http://www.livemint.com/2007/12/19230850/How-to-avoid-a-Jurassic-Park.html

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

RXML – SON OF ROUTEMASTER

If I had to vote on London’s next Mayor in relation to just one issue, I would probably vote for anyone who swore to replace all this city’s wretched ‘bendy buses’ with the proposed successor to my favourite bus of all time, the Routemaster. Entering service in 1956, this was successively replaced by grotesque, gargantuan, totally inhuman constructions that seemed like something from War of the Worlds. Or something soldered together with someone who usually makes rough-and-ready water tanks. By contrast the Routemasters, the last of which was withdrawn in 2005, were warm, feminine and open, in that you could hop on and off with ease.

These days I regularly do battle, sometimes pretty much literally, with all sorts of buses when cycling around London, but with none more than the bendy variety that clog up our urban arteries like so much livid red cholesterol. Ken Livingstone said in 2000 that “only a ghastly, dehumanised moron would want to get rid of” the Routemaster. Hmmm. He did a U-turn four years later. Next year’s Mayoral elections will revolve around many issues, but here’s one around which Londoners could surely come together? What better symbol for the London we want? The new RMXL, which could be in service by 2010 (http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/transport/article3071104.ece), would bring back that open deck and, in addition, be hydrogen-powered. My pencil’s itching.

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

WAS BALI A SUCCESS?

Was asked on short order by openDemocracy to do an appreciation of the outcomes of the climate change conference in Bali – and the result can be found at http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/climate_change/was_bali_a_success.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

DEMOCRACY & SUSTAINABILITY

Across from Heathrow this morning to the Dana Centre (http://www.danacentre.org.uk/) at the Science Museum to meet John Lotherington of the 21st Century Trust and people from the Museum, to discuss the two-part conference we’re planning together for 18 March on the theme of ‘Democracy & Sustainability’. Seems to me that this is one of the great themes of our age, i.e. whether current forms of democracy are constitutionally unable to grapple with the sorts of fundamental challenges that issues like climate change now pose.

For me history is at best equivocal on this. During the Depression, FDR took extraordinary powers and ditto Churchill in WWII. On the other hand, there is the post-WWII Marshall Plan. Interesting to see Al Gore saying that the challenge we now face is equivalent to the Manhattan Project, the Marshall Plan and the Apollo Program, all rolled into one – and done simultaneously, at scale. And here’s a Dana Centre view, inside out. Seemed to me to sum up the need to turn our own thinking on all of this inside out.

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

REINHARD MOHN FELLOWSHIP

View from my bedroom window

Flew today to Berlin, with the plane landing in thick fog: only saw the runway when we were a foot or two above it. The BA pilot had said he was going to let the computers land us. In the city for an evening event hosted by Bertelsmann AG, including their CEO, honouring the Reinhard Mohn Fellowship (http://www.reinhard-mohn-fellowship.com/index.php3). The Fellowship was a gift from the Bertlesmann Executive Board to Reinhard Mohn, who rescued the company in the wake of WWII, to celebrate his eightieth birthday.

Among the speakers, Professor Dr. Dr. (sic) hc. mult. Rita Sussmuth. Charming, but I suspect that only in Germany would one come across such an impresssive honorific! I followed with a keynote – and then got a chance to meet a number of the Fellows, including Dr. Ndidi Nnoli Edozien of Nigeria’s Growing Businesses Foundation, Muhammad Azam Roomi of Pakistan’s Women’s Empowerment Group (who did a great speech) and Ellie Maxwell of Britain’s Firefly Youth Project. A joyous wake, in that the Fellowship is coming to an end. What extraordinary people.

Friday, December 07, 2007

FISH MOVING SLOW IN THE DOURO

Just back from a flying trip – with significant delays both ways – to Porto in Portugal. The conference I was speaking at was held in the giant, converted customs house alongside the River Douro, and focused on the role of small and medium-sized enterprises in Europe’s economy. A key purpose of the event was to launch the latest crop of European Enterprise Awards (http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/entrepreneurship/smes/awards/index_en.htm).

After my session and lunch, it was pouring with rain and the Douro was cloaked in cloud, but I decided to go for a long walk, crossing Gustave Eiffel’s bridge to take a look at the cellars used to store the port wine for which the city and region is famous. Sense of time out of time, with a wonderful moment spent watching large fish moving in the green waters of the Douro.

Rails from the old order disappear under sofa

Fogscape

Fish

Port boats

Port boats 2

Port boats 3

Eiffel’s bridge

Don from behind

Roofscape

Cockburn’s

Bassist – and cat

Don 2

Question-mark goes over my head

Customs House roof (detail)

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

FRONT LINE

Eric Rassman, who worked on our Skoll Program, looks on, spellbound or stupefied

Truly wonderful evening with the European end of SustainAbility – plus John Schaetzl, our new non-executive director – at the Frontline Club, a charity/social enterprise that promotes independent journalism and freedom of expression worldwide (http://www.frontlineclub.com/). I did a celebration of Seb Beloe, our Vice-President of Research & Advocacy, who after around ten years with us is moving across to Henderson as their Head of SRI research.

The photographs below show him at work, rest and play – the first in our conference room, with Mark Lee, the second in a Holland Park pond, shovelling weed on a SustainAbility away day with Virginaia Terry. He and Virginia set up our first U.S. office, in New York, and in my Frontline remarks I recalled how our London team gathered around a phone and computer in our then Knightsbridge office as the U.S. team described to us what they were watching – as two jet airliners flew into the World Trade Center just across the water from them. The third, in happier times, shows Seb relaxing as Jodie (Thorpe) poles an Oxford punt on another away day, while Judy (Kuszewski) sounds of unseen shoals.

Mark and Seb

Virginia and Seb

Jodie, Seb and Judy

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

SIR GEOFFREY CHANDLER SPEAKS OUT

Went to my last Trustees’ meeting at the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre this morning, handing over the role to my colleague Kavita Prakash-Mani – and magically re-emerging as Special Advisor. The Centre has evolved phenomenally since earlier days when the Trustees used to convene in SustainAbility’s offices at a weekend. Founder-Director Chris Avery is a truly remarkable social entrepreneur.

There have been few organisations I have been more excited to be part of and the decision to morph into a different role is driven simply by my sense that I should churn such appointments periodically to keep things fresh.

Then, this evening, many of us went across to SOAS for the launch of the Sir Geoffrey Chandler Speaker Series by Lord Joel Joffe, with the first speech given by Geoffrey. Wonderful event, only slightly marred by theft of my little camera, which I had stupidly left in my coat in an unguarded cloakroom when distracted by people I hadn’t seen for a while. Luckily, I have got an old variant of the same camera – given to me on a trip to Japan some years back by Canon. Video coverage of the proceedings can be found at http://www.business-humanrights.org/Documents/Chandler4Dec2007. Full text at http://www.reports-and-materials.org/Chandler-presentation-4-Dec-2007.doc.

In a key part of his speech, he called on leading NGOs to support Professor John Ruggie’s UN-backed effort to “to identify and clarify standards of corporate responsibility and accountability with regard to human rights”. He argued that:

“Such principles would indeed be norms: it was the right word – what society expects. They would not be enforceable by law, but, applicable to all companies, widely publicised, and with the authority of the UN behind them, they would be enforceable by non-legal influences – market forces, public opinion, NGO scrutiny and pressure, and indeed pressure from a company’s own staff. They would shift market influences from judging only financial results and so begin to move the first deadweight on the boulder.

“We have now spent seven years trying to develop such principles – seven years since the outset of the Norms. Professor Ruggie is in the third year of his mandate. He has engaged in a remarkably open and meticulous exercise of research and consultation to lay the basis for recommendations. But the completion of his mandate is now being delayed, if not opposed, by the human rights NGOs for reasons whose rationality is hard to discern. They apply the experience of dealing with states to companies which are susceptible to wholly different influences. They argue for more research into corporate abuse despite the fact that there is no variety of such abuse for which we do not already have enough evidence to devise preventative policies and principles. Moreover, their approach treats the corporate sector as an adversary rather than a stakeholder whose support, or at least absence of opposition, will be essential to any substantive step forwards. No such arguments were raised during the development of the Norms.

“I cannot sufficiently emphasise the community of interest between responsible governments, good companies and NGOs in seeing this exercise bear fruit. I hope that companies and governments will play a part in keeping it on track and that the NGOs will support a positive outcome. If for whatever reason that outcome is delayed, if we have no idea of how, by whom or by when the process will be continued, then it will be those whom NGOs exist to help who will be the losers.”

Monday, December 03, 2007

FAST COMPANY

Several meetings in the office, then chaired my last session of the ECGD Advisory Council in Docklands, then across to Chelsea for an exhibition of paintings by Brian Johnson, a colleague from IIED and Earthlife days, then dinner with Doug and Margot Miller of GlobeScan. And, above it all, the final announcement of Fast Company’s selection of SustainAbility for one of its 2008 Social Capitalist Awards (http://www.fastcompany.com/social/2008/), developed with Monitor For SustainAbility’s take, please see http://www.sustainability.com/insight/article.asp?id=1263.

Friday, November 30, 2007

PARIS THROUGH X-RAY EYES

Arrived in a riot-shaken Paris late on Wednesday. All a little reminiscent of when I was here in 1973, staying with the late Observer foreign correspondent Gavin Young at the Place des Vosges home of, I seem to recall, a branch of the Rothschilds. The streets were being heavily policed at that time, too, because of a state visit by Golda Meir. At times, it seems that Gavin and I had the streets to ourselves, except for the odd gaggle of Darth-Vader-like SRS police. My main memory of that extraordinary stay is a giant canvas and wood Siamese cat, which looked you directly in the eye, which I would gladly have adopted.

Apart from a lunch earlier today with colleagues at EcoVadis (http://www.ecovadis.com/), where I have just joined the Advisory Board, and in a setting also buzzing with police because it is across the street from the Prime Minister’s under-refurbishment home, Elaine and I kicked up our heels a little and visited a bunch of museums and the like. The Rodin Museum is also just along the street, so we took a stroll around that on our way back.

Bliss. And one of the things that interested me most was the Vélib’ cycle scheme (http://www.velib.paris.fr/), which has disseminated partout, partout, since we were last here. Really should be adopted in London, though the idea of sharing cycle lanes with even more innocents abroad conjures mixed feelings. Interesting to imagine a world in which EcoVadis-like supply chain principles were endemic – and you could look at a line of cycles, for example, through X-ray eyes and know exactly where they were made, by whom and with what social and environmental impact. Maybe one day products will tell you their stories on demand, though I suspect the temptation will be to have them tell fairy-tales and commercially concocted myths rather than unvarnished truths.

Cycles-to-go

Reflection 1, with gold mask in background

Reflection 2

Reflection 3

Reflection 4

Reflection 5

By one of my favourite sculptors

Around the corner from the Place des Vosges

Elaine’s favourite Place des Vosges haunt

Cycles near the Jardin des Plantes

Islamic hospitality

What’s ‘sparrow’ in Arabic? (A quick Googling suggests it mght be ‘Usfoor’ …)


Mint tea

Part of EcoVadis’ front door

Trompe l’oeuil outside EcoVadis’ door

Penseur 1, avec topiary

Penseur 2, avec Tour

Gare du Nord

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

BACK TO CHATEAU DE SUDUIRAUT

Elaine and I took the Eurostar from St Pancras last Sunday first to Paris and then on to Bordeaux, for an AXA Investment Managers event at the Château de Suduiraut (http://www.suduiraut.com/). Both of us still trying to get over ‘flu – which I think I picked up in The Netherlands last week and which has dogged us both through much of this week.

Still, amazing to finally be on the UK side of the Channel in a train that does what a TGV should. Spent part of the trip reading Donald McCaig’s astonishingly engaging sequel to Gone With the Wind, Rhett Butler’s People. Since Margaret Mitchell’s orginal book played such a key role in getting me to an excellent ‘O’ Level History result, after I read it while confined to the school sanatorium with chickenpox, have always had a soft spot for the saga – and McCaig has shot a different reality through the weft of Mitchell’s narrative which I found completely convincing.

Weirdly, Elaine, Gaia, Hania and I had been to Château Suduiraut almost 20 years ago, while on a trip around the wineries of Bordeaux. Château d’Yquem had rather sniffily turned us away when we turned up without an appointment, but we were greeted very warmly just down the hill, by the owner of Suduiraut, who took us around his establishment. We bought a number of bottles, one of which we still have, dating back to 1986.

Had tried a tiny bit of Château d’Yquem when we were driving back through France from Cyprus in 1959 and I was around 9 or 10. Pat, my mother, has had a bottle under her bed for decades to drink when the Grim Reaper finally comes calling. Since she died earlier in the year – to be semi-miraculously revived by my youngest sister, Tessa – there has been some dispute as to whether the bottle should have been drunk by now …

We had no idea until told by the taxi-driver on our way across to the Château that it had been bought not long after we went through by AXA – and significantly upgraded and expanded. The AXA event, over three days, focused on ‘Responsible Investment: The Future Agenda for Institutional Investors.’ Had been invited by Raj Thamotheram, AXA’s Director of Responsible Investment. The sessions were fascinating, kicking off with Michael Watkins of Genesis Advisers on what he calls “predictable surprises”. My task was to listen assiduously and pull together the threads on the morning of the third day, as a prelude to projecting where the responsible investment agenda might take us.

View into the courtyard from our room

View from bathroom

Espaliered

Suduiraut 1

Suduiraut 2

Mistletoe

Distant vines

A classic year for SustainAbility, too

Elaine fights flu

Exploring

Misty morning

Tall boy admirer

Illumination

I’m snookered when it comes to table games

Environs 1

Environs 2

Robert mikes Raj up for our session

Elaine, me and Floris Lambrechtsen (Director, Double Dividend), also part of our session

Environs 3

The Road to Château d’Yquem

Shadowed

Danyelle Guyatt (Principal, Responsible Investment Team, Mercer), Elaine, Raj

Me, waiting for taxi to bear us away

Saturday, November 24, 2007

WINTER WONDERLAND CYCLE

Cycling in through Hyde Park yesterday morning, my eye was taken by the new wheel rising near the Serpentine. Apparently, it’s to do with an upcoming Winter Wonderland celebration. It’s rather as if the London Eye had sent spores drifting across west London, with its progeny mushrooming across the landscape. Took photos of the wheel as I cycled home, from far and nearer, and was struck by the way that the capsules they were beginning to hang made the sporulation image even stronger.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

ENERGY DELTA CONVENTION

Up at the outlandish UK-equivalent hour of 03.45 to catch plane from Groningen to Amsterdam, then back to London City Airport. Had flown out on Monday to kick off the 2007 Energy Delta Convention (http://www.energyconvention.nl/). Very much enjoyed the first plenary session, with follow-on keynotes from Gerald Doucet (Secretary General, World Energy Council) and Gertjan Lankhorst (CEO, GasTerra). Also enjoyed the dinner last night at the AA-kerk, the old church in Groningen. I was told that in its heyday as a sacred structure people would be holding funerals at the same time that others were selling live cattle. I think I prefer the format last night, by the light of hundreds of little night-lights arrayed around the walls of the church. Had a fascinating, wide-ranging conversation with Roland Scholz, Chair of Environmental Sciences at ETH in Zurich.

Friday, November 16, 2007

ENGAGING STAKEHOLDERS

Spent last night at Vinopolis with the participants in SustainAbility’s latest ‘Engaging Stakeholders’ workshop, which had been held out earlier in the day out at BP’s Sunbury-on-Thames site. Companies involved included Akzo Nobel, AstraZeneca, BASF, Bayer, BP, Credit Suisee, Deutsche Telekom, Dow, Dr Reddy’s and DSM – which only takes us from A to D.

Joined at my invitation by Ambreen Waheed, founder and Executive Director of RBI, Pakistan, who I met last year at a CII event in India. The evening started with a wine-tasting. Not sure if this was the link, but well over a deacde ago that I used to use the metaphor of wine-tasting when talking and writing about our early work on environmental and sustainability report benchmarking, using the language of crops, vintages, blends and so on. Several of those taking part used to work with SustainAbility, including Christele Delbe, who worked with me for several years some time back and is now Head of Corporate Responsibility at Orange and Nick Robinson, Strategic Advisor at BP.

Today it all moved to BP’s HQ in St James’s Square, where I chaired a panel session with three people from the social enterprise sector: Sabina Khan (Director of Policy and Research at Social Enterprise London, http://www.sel.org.uk/), Reed Paget (Managing Director at Belu Water, http://www.belu.org/) and Wingham Rowan (Project Director, Slivers-of-Time, http://www.sliversoftime.info/). Social Enterprise London is working to to establish the capital as a significant cluster of social enterprise, using the 2012 Oympics and Paralympic Games as a springboard to boost the sector. Belu Water, which I have known pretty much since its inception, was launched in 2003 and invests 100% of its profits in clean water projects in the developing world. Slivers-of-Time, meanwhile, helps working people sell slivers of their time in ways that suit their needs and lifestyles.

Then back to the office to work on a couple of upcoming presentations and to meet Paul Gilding and his son, with Geoff Lye. Quite a week.

Tasting

Ambreen and I

Christele Delbe (left)

Rainbow seating

Sabina and Christele

Footwear

Katie scribes

Reed holds forth

Winding up

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

THE FUTURE OF THE CORPORATION

Spent the past couple of days taking part in ‘The Future of the Corporation’ summit, held in Boston’s deeply historic Faneuil Hall (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faneuil_Hall). Orgnaised by the Corporation 20/20 team led by Allen White. Didn’t notice the grasshopper weathervane as I entered the Hall, even though it’s visible in my photo. Always feel I have a grasshopper mind, but hadn’t heard of grasshoppers being used to identify British agents and spies in the War of Independence period …

The session I moderated had a panel consisting of Arie de Geus, David Korten and Henry Mintzberg, and concluded with a discussion facilitated by Peter Senge. Arie noted that corporations are a relatively young species – and argued that evolutionary forces tend to be more important than any attempts to design corporations.

On the second day, Aron Cramer of BSR – moderating a panel including the likes of Bob Monks and Rosabeth Moss Kanter – noted that the challenge is not simply about the future of the corporation, but also about the future of the social contract more broadly. Monks opined that this was one of the most important meetings to have been held in Faneuil Hall, given the increasing asymmetry between the power of business and that of society more generally. Given that much of the work on the Declaration of Independence was done here, it is not surprising that much was made of the need for a Declaration of Interdependence – an early form of which was produced in 1992 for the UN earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro (http://www.davidsuzuki.org/About_us/Declaration_of_Interdependence.asp).

In my introductory comments, I mentioned reading Ronald C. White, Jr.’s wonderful book Lincoln’s Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural on the flight in to Boston – and noted how much of the future design of the United States Lincoln managed to herald in just 703 words. I also pointed to the bust of Frederick Douglass, behind me and alongside that of John Adams. The book concludes with Lincoln asking Douglass, a sometime critic, what he thought of his just-delivered speech. “Mr. Lincoln,” Douglass replied, ” that was a sacred effort.” My point here was that the impact of a conference like the one we were embarking upon would not be measured by the quantity of words, but by their quality – and the quality of the thought-trains and relationships they catalysed.

One comment that sticks in my mind came from Mark Goyder of Tomorrow’s Company in one of the World Cafe sessions, in relation to our natural tendency to focus on CEOs and companies currently seen as heroic champions of the sustainability agenda: “Today’s peacock,” he said, “is tomorrow’s feather duster.”

For me at least, Charles Handy was the most moving speaker of all, kicking off the meeting and helping draw it to a conclusion. The challenge, he quietly noted, is to do one’s best at what one is best at – in the service of others. Even more moving, though, was the moment when Bob Massie arrived in the Hall with his wife Anne. Though he remains profoundly ill, it was glorious to spend some time in their company. in the end, such company, conversations and relationships are the warp on which the weft of civil society is woven, ultimately determining its ability to constrain and shape corporate behaviour.

Faneuil Hall 1

Faneuil Hall 2 – with grasshopper weathervane

John Adams

Inside the Hall

Peter Senge centre-stage

Design – or evolution?

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

HBSP

It’s Monday, it must be – Boston. Interesting night at the Omni Parker Hotel, where all the alarms went off at 03.30 in the morning, and an urgent woman’s voice roused us all from bed. In the lobby, I had the pleasure of seeing Boston firemen (people) coursing about in all their tackle – and of being unexpectedly hugged by Talia Aharoni of MAALA, based in Israel. Worth getting up for.

Otherwise, today was mainly spent out at Harvard Business School Press’s offices in Waterton, filming interviews about the new book, The Power of Unreasonable People, doing a lunchtime session with much of the HBSP team, and then working with the marketing folk in the afternoon. All very encouraging. Then back to hotel for a pre-conference session with the likes of Allen White, Arie de Geus, Craig Cohon, Deborah Doane and Talia. Am hoping to avoid firemen tonight.

Saturday, November 10, 2007

SHAKEN AND STIRRED

Quite a week, with among other things trips to Frankfurt (for the third annual Horasis China Europe Business meeting, where I spoke at a session on sustainable growth) and, today, an in-and-out trip to Geneva with Sophia Tickell to talk to Pamela Hartigan and her colleagues at the Schwab Foundation. On the flight in, the plane hit wind shear over the lake and began an energetic rocking and rolling – with the result that the pilot rocketed back up into the skies for another 15 minutes or so of turmoil. Can’t remember when I’ve felt so shaky, but effect wore off once we got into our swing with the team.

Have been reading Lincoln’s Greatest Speech, focusing on his second inaugural, as I travel. By Ronald C., White, Jr., it’s an eye-opening introduction to a critical turning point in American history. When everything was shaky. So much packed by Lincoln into just 703 words. And so wonderfully unpacked by White. The book was given to me earlier in the week by a colleague from our D.C. office, Jonathan Halperin. Stirring.

ROBERT DAVIES’ BOOK

A note this morning from David Grayson about the late Robert Davies: “As I was wide awake and have been up since 4am this morning (and am now fortified by too many cups of coffee), here in Boston, I have been going through Robert’s blog:http://www.seeingthepossibilities.com/. I don’t think I had previously understood what he was doing with this blog – in the time remaining to him, to download and share some of the key things he had learnt. I keep hearing that wonderful phrase: “our lives are too short not to share what we know” – and here was the consumate campaigner/social entrepreneur – “and who we know so that the world can profit and the journey to sustainability be a little shorter.” With all the hot-links to other resources and people, it is really Robert’s ‘book.’ Maybe, we can all promote hot-links to the site too?”

Sunday, November 04, 2007

YORK

Up to York yesterday, for sixtieth birthday of Elaine’s longest-standing friend, David Bradbury. Early in the evening, before dinner, we walked around Yorkminster, which was illuminated by a system that responded to sound, including people talking. Synaesthesic.

– posted by John Elkington @ 11:07 PM

Saturday, November 03, 2007

ICH BIN EIN ADOPTIVE FRESTONIAN

Have always struggled with nationality, variously thinking of myself as Terran, European or English, but – probably because I was brought up elsewhere in the waning days of the British Empire – rarely British. Still, if I follow the cascade down, perhaps the most granular form of identity I ever experienced related to being an adoptive Frestonian. For six years in the early 1990s, SustainAbility occupied the top floor of The People’s Hall in what 30 years ago was declared the Free and Independent Republic of Frestonia.

There were Frestonian passports and stamps – all part of a declaration of independence from Britain. Our space was the National Theatre, though it had previously been variously used as a storage space for church organs and a brothel, I seem to recall. All this brought to mind by a piece by Joe Moran in today’s Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2204555,00.html).

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

HENKEL

Back today from a flying visit with Seb (Beloe) to Henkel, in Dusseldorf. They have invested growing effort in the sustainability agenda. We had lunch with senior folk in the area, then did an afternoon session with 30 or so people from the detergents, adhesives and cosmetics business units. Wildly different atmosphere from when I first started visiting chemical plants (Henkel would insist here that they are a fast-moving products company, not in the chemicals sector per se) across Europe, Japan and the US in the 1970s.

Green sign: Persil is a key Henkel product

A Brand Like a …

… Friend

Our Founder

The Henkel icon for sustainability is helped to its feet

Monday, October 29, 2007

HARD RAIN

General delight as we opened a pack of copies of the new book Hard Rain in the office today, though the issues raised are pretty grim. Sub-titled ‘Our Headlong Collision With Nature,’ the book has been put together by an age-old friend, Mark Edwards of Still Pictures. Geoff (Lye) and I have contributed a chapter, titled ‘Beware the Climate Fixers.’ For more on the linked exhibition, go to http://www.hardrainproject.com/exhibition.htm.

Ori (Chandler) and Sam (Lakha) pore over stunning photo cards Mark sent with books

HE’S NOT THERE

Among the first things I saw this morning as I read the Financial Times was the full page on the new ‘Crossing Borders’ endowment fund being launched in memory of Robert Davies, whose memorial service we went to at Wesley’s Chapel, City Road, later this morning. Prince Charles among those honouring Robert. Then on to reception at The Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment, in Charlotte Road. Next, lunch with Sophia and David Grayson at the suprisingly good Great Eastern Dining Room just around the corner, after which Sophia, Elaine and I headed back to Bedford Row. Worked frantically on a column for a Japanese magazine, then headed across to the Curzon Mayfair, where Gaia and Hania had invited us to see a preview of the new film on Bob Dylan, I’m Not There. Astonishingly good – Cate Blanchett magnificent. Then Todd Haynes, the director, answered questions, the last one from Hania. Then home to prepare for Germany tomorrow.

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

ANITA’S ARMY

Made my way to Westminster Central Hall last night for the celebration of Anita Roddick’s life and works. Matthew Fox, the theologian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Fox_(priest)), acted as compere, winning a round of applause when he mentioned that he had once been sacked by the Pope. He wondered aloud how many people there had been to an invitation-only wake where over 2,500 people turned up. Anita’s daughter Sam called us “my Mum’s army.” Worst side of my character soon surfaced, though, when we were all encouraged to become activists: from schooldays on I have found taking orders just a little difficult.

Wonderful to collide with all sorts of people, both at the event and on the march across Westminster Bridge afterwards. Found myself sitting just in front of Reed Paget of Belu, whose water later sustained us on our journey. Then bumped, among others, into age-old friends Steve and Sandar Warshal (he of Greenpeace Business, among other things), Craig Sams and Josephine Fairley (of Green & Black’s, and she told me she had been writing about us and The Green Consumer Guide earlier in the day), Rob and Heather Foster (who I knew aeons ago at the Body Shop), Elisabeth Laville of Paris-based Utopies, and then, as we stood, in front of Shell Centre, with placards waving and drums banging, I found myself introduced twice to a begloved and no doubt quite cold Bianca Jagger. All slightly surreal, particularly alongside the Ogoni peacewagon, but all very much in the spirit of the remarkable woman we had all come to celebrate. And I did wonder how many of those in the crowd had client relationships with Shell, as SustainAbility has had for a fair few years. It’s a complex world.

Elisabeth and placard

John Sauven (with placard), Bianca et al

VENTER MODEL OF CREATIVE DESTRUCTION

Every so often you come across someone whose view of the future mutates your own. This morning I spent a couple of hours at the Royal Society as part of a small group invited by Demos to listen to Craig Venter, the synthetic biology man, with respondents including Lord Martin Rees, who heads the Royal Society. Mind-bending stuff – and more on the Demos website (http://www.demos.co.uk/blog/thesynthesizer).

Venter has his yacht Sorcerer II cruising the world’s oceans looking for new organisms and new genes (http://www.sorcerer2expedition.org/version1/HTML/main.htm). Pamela Hartigan and I have covered Venter in the environmental chapter of the new book, but I have scarcely started to scratch the surface of his thinking and work (see http://www.jcvi.org/). But if current demographic, resource and environmental trends continue to play out, my sense is that the market pull on some of his technologies will ramp up mightily, posing massive problems to existing, incumbent industries.

Meeting subject to Chatham House Rule, so limit to what can be said, but interesting that Venter spoke of work on the virus for Spanish influenza, which from 1918 killed 20-50 million people, most of them young and fit. I am reading a book on the subject at the moment, which I picked up at Duke University a few weeks back. One of the things scientists are looking at is what made the virus so virulent – and what enabled it to send young people’s immune systems into choking overdrive, with older people much less affected. (At the higher estimates, the book tells me, 8-10% of all young adults alive in 1918 died.) More than twice as many people as died in WWI. That’s one reason why even the optimistic scenario in recent Raising Our Game report included a major global pandemic as a driver of change – for better or worse. Our airports, airlines and mass transit systems make us much more vulnerable than we were in 1918.

Sunday, October 21, 2007

THE BOOK’S GONE

The week started with my session with the clergyfolk out at St George’s House, Windsor Castle. Turned out to be quite engaging – and my suggestion that we can already see all around us the self-assembling building blocks of a 22nd century religion, based on Gaian principles, but with a harder edge, had working groups discussing whether to compete or collaborate. On my way to the gates, I encountered a hawker with his hawk. Just as people look like their dogs …

Among the highlights of the rest of the week was an evening party at the Bankside Gallery organised by Mark Campanale and Nick Robins, old friends, for the socially responsible investment (SRI) world. JP (Renaut), Seb (Beloe) and Sophia (Tickell) also came across from SustainAbility. Among those I talked to were a couple of people I hadn’t seen for over 20 years.

On Thursday, Sam faxed the 65 amended pages of the new book to Harvard Business School Press, pretty much the last step for us in terms of content. Now to prepare for the launch in the New Year. In the evening, Elaine and I had dinner with Gaia and Hania at the French House in Soho, wonderful but extremely noisy – partly because we were sitting by a mirrored wall – where my bat’s ears picked up everything and anything.

On Friday, a couple of my fellow columnists for Director magazine came in, independently, and I spent a fair amount of time preparing for upcoming speeches in Germany, The Netherlands and elsewhere. Also met a couple of people who are developing a fascinating new business build around carbon monitoring, of which more anon – where they want me to join their advisory board. Much of the time, though, at least in evenings and weekends, I am working on a new venture, linked to the book. Today, Ritu (Khanna) came to a late lunch and the three of us we went for a walk around Barnes. Very enjoyable, but am feeling quite tired at the moment.

Monday, October 15, 2007

DRAGON OVERHEAD

Have always considered it a sign of good luck if a heron flies overhead, regardless of direction. As I walked to Bedford Row on Saturday, with the acacia trees already in view, I heard a strangely familiar noise in the sky, slightly to the west. A dragonfly came to mind. And then a Dragon Rapide hove into view, puttering across the sky like a dainty old lady. Unmistakable from the paired elliptical wings. Wonderfuel: cheered me up no end. They should be available on the National Health. When I mentioned it to Tim when we got down to Little Rissington later in the day, he said he had flown them, a long time ago. Pulled out his log book to show a photograph, to find there wasn’t one. So we filled in a little bit of history, too.

Sunday, October 14, 2007

STRADDLING THE CRACK OF DOOM

View from my desk in Bedford Row

That, among other things, was the week that Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize and the debris continued to float down around Gordon Brown.

In terms of The Week That Was, other things that will stick in my mind include a very lively dinner on Tuesday in Green Park with Colin le Duc (Generation Investment Management), Alois Flatz (SRI investor, ex-SAM), Bernard Mercer (New Philanthropy Capital) and Jason Scott (Generation); the annual meeting between the ECGD Export Guarantees Advisory Council and NGOs focusing on the export credit sector, which I chaired, followed by a dinner hosted by Unilever at the Tate Modern, where we got to walk around Doris Salcedo’s stunning Shibboleth (both on Wednesday); then an evening listening to Steven Pinker on language (Thursday); next a dinner with Kavita Prakash-Mani and her family (Friday); an unscheduled trip to the office to collect something I shouldn’t have left there and then a drive across to the Cotswolds to see my parents (yesterday, Saturday). Elaine (who has been helping Hania into her new flat) and I were so zonked when we got there that we collapsed. I slept for twelve hours straight.

Shibboleth 1

Shibboleth 2

Shibboleth 3

Shibboleth 4

Elaine and Shibboleth 5

Shibboleth 6

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

FACING A GLOBAL CHALLENGE

Nice article in today Times on Sam (Lakha) and I in the ‘Working Relationships’ section, see http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/career_and_jobs/secretarial/article2575465.ece.