Journal

Volans has been working for several years on how breakthrough innovation can help shape tomorrow’s capitalism. In 2016, on a mission to explore how exponential mindsets, technologies and business models can bridge the gap between what we are doing today and what we will need to have done by 2030 to meet the UN Global Goals, we visited the meccas of moonshot thinking in California.

In Los Angeles, we met with the XPRIZE Foundation, while in San Francisco and Mountain View we dropped in on Google’s ‘X’ facility and Singularity University. Shortly afterwards, we were thrilled when XPRIZE Foundation Chief Scientist Paul Bunje agreed to join our Board.

As we have worked to distil what we have discovered in co-evolving our Project Breakthrough initiative with the UN Global Compact, working closely with the fabulous team at Atlas of the Future, we have begun to synthesize our insights from numerous filmed interviews into a series of video shorts.

The first of our ‘medley’ short films has posted on the Fast Company Ideas site today. It’s about some of the things we have learned to date about Breakthrough Mindsets – and features the CEOs of companies like Covestro, Enel and Grant Thornton, leading sustainability champions from Interface and Patagonia, exponential entrepreneurs from Hampton Creek/Just, Planet, Provenance and TransferWise, and thought leaders from MIT, Project Drawdown and the XPRIZE Foundation.

We will be following up with a second piece on breakthrough business – and a third on our rapidly evolving Carbon Productivity work. We also covered elements of the story in a recent piece in Harvard Business Review.

Any comments on any of this VERY welcome.

The other day, Oil Barrett asked me who I would still like to meet. Alongside the odd oddity, like Crazy Horse, I mentioned Sylvia Earle. Then, today, Singularity University tweeted a link to this interview. Charming and, well, hopeful. But the scale of what faces us is, well, off the scale.

Inspired by a visit to the British Museum’s ‘The Scythians’ exhibition, before it closed, here’s a brief reflection of what symbolic offerings we should bury with the executives of fossil fuels companies and industries currently hard at work destabilising our climate.

2018, once again, has taken off like a rocket, albeit with less overseas travel so far than the peak periods last year. A big achievement this past week was the successful delivery of our Healthy Ageing event in Newcastle, part of our 3-cities program with Innovate UK and the Knowledge Transfer Network.

Great people and some great discussions, including a panel session I chaired with speakers from the National Innovation Centre for Ageing, Newcastle City Council and Innovate UK. Sadly, Louise (Kjellerup Roper) was struck down by flu, so couldn’t make it. I have been on the edges of something for many weeks, but walked across to the Fleet Street Clinic a week or so ago to get a jab that is apparently better than the one they have been using recently in the NHS. Fingers crossed.

Otherwise, we’re working on the Volans strategy and on the future of our Breakthrough and Carbon Productivity streams of work. And am reading a good deal, with current books on the go including: What Is Populism, by Jan-Werner Müller; White King by Leanda de Lisle, the story of Charles I, the “traitor, murderer and martyr” who is a prominent feature in the family tree; and the sci-fi novel Dark Matter, by Blake Crouch, which I’m enjoying tremendously.

Delighted to see HBR posting my latest column today, but suspect its publication may have been accelerated by the “bomb cyclone” that has hit North America in recent days. Sadly, I suspect we will be hearing a good deal more about explosive cyclogenesis. Another way in which the climate agenda is beginning to bite on ordinary people and lives.