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Kicked off the week outside Windsor at the Sustainable Brands 2015 conference. Spoke in the opening session with Koann Skrziniarz of SB and Albert Bosch Riera, the explorer – who among many other things has climbed all seven of the world’s highest mountains. His theme: ‘The Spirit of Adventure.’ Travelled back towards London with him after our session ended – we got on like the proverbial house on fire and ended up hugging goodbye.

The rest of the week slightly blurred by, though we had a fascinating meeting of the Friends Life/Aviva Stewardship Committee of Reference, on the 23rd floor of the Aviva Undershaft building in the City of London. Very interesting presentation from Amec Foster Wheeler on how they see and handle the ethicals to sustainability agenda.

Then had to scoot out to T5 for the flight to Madrid, for the annual meeting of the LEAD initiative developed by the UN Global Compact. The security was not noticeably tighter after the terrible events in Paris on Friday 13th. Great welcome as we arrived late for the UNGC reception, after which we headed on to a delightful supper with Richard Northcote of Covestro.

A well produced UNGC event the next day, co-hosted by Endesa in their extraordinary HQ building, not far from the airport. Met some very useful people and had a potentially landmark discussion with Lise Kingo, who now runs the UNGC. More anon on that, hopefully.

First snow this week, yesterday morning – great clods of fluffy snow falling, as though someone was plucking a goose in the heavens. Walked across to the bookshop to browse and came back with two huge history times, Eugene Rogan’s The Fall of the Ottomans and James Holland’s The War in the West. A bit like a squirrel gathering nuts for the winter, though a fair amount of travel to come before Christmas.

Am watching monkey-hunting chimps and swarming army ants in David Attenborough’s The Hunt as I try to summarise a week that hit a horrible low point on Friday 13th, through we didn’t hear the news about the Paris ISIS attacks until we were home after a dinner in Victoria area with Doug and Margot Miller. Elaine was meant to be going to Paris on Monday to see a Japanese friend, but has decided to delay the trip.

The week started with a launch event for Peter Lacy’s new book, Waste to Wealth, at an event co-hosted by Accenture and BT in the BT Tower. Wonderful  views from the revolving top of the tower – a perspective I first enjoyed in the 1960s when taken to the restaurant by family friends, the Hanks. That was the first time, I think, that I had been up a proper highrise. We were told at the launch event that the tower cost £2.5 million (sic) to build!

On Tuesday, we were visited by two old friends/colleagues, Paul Tebo (formerly the sustainability lead at DuPont) and Terry A’Hearn, who now runs the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency – but who was Deputy Director of the Victoria Environmental Protection Authority in Australia when I first met him, through the Antipodean speaking tours I did over some seven years with Murray Edmonds. In  between, Terry ran the Northern Ireland EPA, and had some extraordinary tales to tell about the toxic waste trade there.

Paul reminded me of the evening when, at a dinner with DuPont’s then Chairman Chad Holliday, Chad asked me how I thought of the giant chemical company – and I replied it that it made me think of a slime mould. He, apparently, was shocked, until I explained that this was a good thing. A slime mould moves and evolves from opportunity to opportunity, morphing in extraordinary fashion along the way.

In the evening, Elaine and I went across to GlobeScan’s offices for the launch of Doug Miller’s new book, Can The World Be Wrong?, for which I contributed a foreword. Was on a panel with Doug, Professor (Sir) Robert (Bob) Worcester, (Lord) Mark Malloch Brown and Anna Comerford, the publisher from Greenleaf Publishing.

Wednesday included a trip by train up to Milton Keynes, then across to Cranfield University, where I am a Visiting Professor at the School of Management’s Doughty Centre on Corporate Responsibility. Sadly, David Grayson was away on urgent personal business, but my keynote went very well, followed by a great discussion and then a dinner with students and people from companies like Rolls-Royce and Coca-Cola.

On Thursday, I went across to Bose in Regent’s Street, with a pair of noise cancelling headphones whose headband had started to disintegrate yesterday into small black plastic pieces on my scalp and neck. Made me look slightly bubonic. They offered a discount on an up-to-date pair. Great sound. I use them to protect my tinnitus- and hyperacusis-impacted hearing on the Tube.

Much of the week has been spent on developing our exponential sustainability thinking, with Sam coming up with the tagline, ‘The Future’s Exponential,’ in the course of our conversations. Richard did great work on tracking down images of good and bad exponentials for the presentation I’m due to do for a UN Global Compact event in Madrid.

On Friday, my meetings included a session with Colin Peacock, who is chairing the Social Stock Exchange‘s new property advisory panel. Fascinating insights into the construction and real estate sectors. Then across to Wilton Road in Victoria for a delightful Turkish dinner at Kazan with the girls and the Millers.

Discovered that Elaine and Margot had found the front door open at a house, number 89, we used to live at in Ebury Street – and walked in. When the builders came up from downstairs, Elaine explained that she was in our bedroom from over 40 years ago. Then home, to discover with dismay what had happened in Paris.

Thrilled that our Breakthrough Forecast has made it into the new Atlas of the Future.

For CSR or Shared Value fetishists, the video of the full Barclays debate on ‘Is CSR Dead?’ is available here. Starring Patrick Thomas, me, Mark Kramer and Janet Voûte.

Thought of calling our new program Hammerhead today, because I have been spending so much of my time in recent months seeming to banging my head against a brick wall. Reminds me of the experience when I was trying to develop the triple bottom line concept in the early 1990s.

And weirdly, just today, I was working on the ‘Exponential Futures’ framing for the next stage in our Breakthrough work, and was going back to Alvin Toffler’s work. His 1970 book Future Shock and 1980 sequel The Third Wave, both hugely influential in the development of my own interests and thinking, were still in the shelves upstairs.

Have long had a sense that I had read something on multiple bottom lines long before I came up with the TBL concept – and, reading through Toffler’s books, I came across a reference to multiple bottom lines on page 257 of The Third Wave. I owe the man a huge debt, it seems.

The rest of the week has been typically blurred, with a day off on Monday, which included a visit to the Eskenazi Gallery in Clifford Street, W1. We went to see an exhibition called Transfigured Echoes, featuring recent paintings by Liu Dan. Stunning. My favourite was Taihu Rock of the Shaoyuan Garden. Giuseppe, who I hadn’t met before, came out to say hello and gave me a copy of the exhibition book.

We also went across to the Courtauld at Somerset House to see the Peter Lanyon exhibition. Soaring Flight. By far my favourite painting is the one featured on the Courtaulds website. I had been at Bryanston School with his one of Lanyon’s sons, shortly after his death following a gliding accident.

The same evening I went to The Crowd’s event with Robin Chase, co-founder of companies like Zipcar and Buzzcar, and author of Peers Inc. Afterwards on to Smith’s Top Floor at Smithfield with Robin, Jim Woods and other guests, including Jo Bertram of Uber.

Fascinating email exchange afterwards, all helping me work through our next big jump.

On Wednesday, after a busy day, I went across to the Singapore High Commission to speak at a Singapore International Foundation event. On a panel with Amanda Brooks (Director of Innovation, UK Department for Business, Innovation and Skills), Christopher Davies (Director, Pender Communication), Mark Howard (British Council’s Head of Teaching & Blended Learning), Jonathan McClory (Partner at Portland) and Foo Chi Hsia (Singapore High Commissioner), with our moderator being Jennifer Lewis, a Governor with SIF since 2007 – and an MD with the Singapore Investment Corporation. Wonderful to be considered a ‘Friend of Singapore’.

Then on Thursday we had a 5-hour session with Covestro at Futerra’s London offices, at which we made a good deal of progress, I think, followed by a shareholders’ meeting at SustainAbility.

Friday included a great call with Sophia Tickell of Meteos, where I began to test out my thinking around the future of campaigning in an exponential world. Deborah Doane also came in to quiz me on what Greenpeace should be doing over the next decade. An interesting set of questions.

Saturday saw me heading across to Oxford early to be part of a panel session at EMERGE 2015, the annual social innovation conference held at the Saïd Business School. Tim Smit did a barnstorming keynote, and then our session was chaired by Cliff Prior of UnLtd and included David Grayson of Cranfield University and Joanna Hafenmayer of My Impact.

Funny thing on the train down. Got an email from Richard Johnson, who was sitting elsewhere on the same train, and behind some young women also heading down to Oxford. He reported them saying the following:

“John Elkington is doing the opening session!”

“I know, I’m reading his latest book at the moment.”

“Remind me,” he said, “to add that to our next impact report!”