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Just back from the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights UK ‘Ripples of Hope‘ conference in Manchester, a stepping stone to the Ripples of Hope Festival next year. Put together by a great team, led by Dennis Marcus.

The evening before the event, Wednesday, 20 or so of us were hosted by ASK Italian CEO Chris Holmes – who I plan to meet shortly back in London. I had walked across to the restaurant in the company of the extraordinary Kerry Kennedy, seventh child of Bobbie Kennedy, a long-time hero of mine. The seventh child of a seventh child, I discover.

(I saw him once in the late 1960s, as I travelled to London on a train from Kingham, in the Cotswolds. I imagine he had been to, or through, the U.S. air base at Brize Norton.)

Then had the great privilege of sitting next to Kerry during the meal, alongside Eva Bishop (see below) and Kim Polman of Reboot the Future (ditto). A wonderful, multi-way conversation, then walked back to the hotel with Kim.

The next morning, our opening panel session was introduced by Ella’s Kitchen founder Paul Lindley. I kicked off with a 20-minutes presentation on the 2020s as “The Exponential Decade.”

Then I invited the panellists onto stage at the wonderful Home theatre, working to ensure that our speakers didn’t club themselves senseless on a low-hanging ceiling on. the stairs up to the stage. Our 90-minute session featured, in alphabetical order of surname:

Eva Bishop of 53 Degrees Capital

Gina Miller of SCM Direct – and hugely influential anti-Brexit campaigner

Ian Stuart, CEO of HSBC UK

Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the first female Prime Minister of Denmark

The session, including an extended and lively interchange with the audience, was enormously well received. I may have chaired, but the truth is that the panel developed a life of its own.

Afterwards I could relax, attending two workshops led by Rosa Sommer Martin and Eric Levine, both of Leaders Quest. Great catch-up with (Lord) Michael Hastings and others later in the evening, before the final plenary session began.

The evening event was kicked off by Kerry – and included an extraordinary series of delights and horrors. Among others, on the upside, I was blown away by Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham and by Jude Kelly, who is leading the charge in the build-up to the 2021 Festival.

Was also thrilled to hear a reading of poems by Simon Armitage, the Poet Laureate. He began with the wonderful In Praise of Air, then moved on to the intensely moving Black Roses, in memory of the murdered goth Sophie Lancaster.

But, at least for me, the most moving session of the evening came when Dennis interviewed Illuminée Nganemariya, a survivor the Rwandan Genocide of 1994. An intense mixture of unimaginable brutalities, countered by the remarkable story of an extraordinary woman.

I talked to Illuminée afterwards, and her co-author Paul Dickson, bought a copy of their book Miracle In Kigali, and read it in its entirety on the train back to London this morning. The worst – and the best – of humankind.

And overarching it all, the memory and legacy of Bobbie Kennedy. A timely reminder of what true leadership – and true courage – looks like.

Announced at our Tomorrow’s Capitalism Forum on 10 January, the first pair of (prototype) Green Swan Awards go to Sir Tim Smit and Sacha Dench. More on their stories here.

To Madrid to work with Acciona yesterday, with Louise (Kjellerup Roper) and Tom (Farrand). Acciona are a global leader in sustainable infrastructures and renewable energy.

The event drew together fast track leaders from across the company and across the world, to consider how the company can switch on to exponential sustainability in the coming years.

Great group – and, for me, an urgently needed injection of optimism as the UK moves inexorably towards a hard-fought (if idiotic) Brexit.

On 10 January, we opened our doors – or, rather, the doors of Aviva Investors’ HQ conference centre at 1 Undershaft, aka ‘The Trellis’ – for over 300 delegates taking part in the Tomorrow’s Capitalism Forum.

As they arrived, they came downstairs through a portal fashioned by our oldest daughter, Gaia, made out of reclaimed plant materials. The central element picked up the overarching theme of flight and uplift, which would be centre-stage towards the end of the event.

In the event, the Forum – kicked off by Volans CEO Louise Kjellerup Roper and Tomorrow’s Capitalism Inquiry Lead Richard Roberts – proved to be a runaway success. And people loved the laser-cut wooden badges, one of which is shown below, featuring the Volans hummingbird logo:

The plenary sessions were also filmed – and Volans will be posting edited footage shortly. My own write-up on this blog has been slowed by the fact that we have been rebooting my website, ahead of a relaunch next week. But here are some highlights that have stuck in my memory – as we introduced the idea of the 2020s as “The Exponential Decade.”

That said, and speaking of reclaimed materials, I tackled exponentiality in my opening presentation by going back to Lester Brown’s work – particularly his 1978 book The Twenty-Ninth Day – to spotlight how poorly equipped our brains are to detect and respond to exponential trends. He was a huge influence on my own thinking – and I had the pleasure of meeting him several times, both in Davos and Washington, D.C.

You have almost certainly heard the riddle Brown based that book on. If waterlilies go from a standing start to clogging an entire lake, on what day is the lake surface half-covered? You guessed it.

The same theme of exponentiality was central to later presentations, including that given by Dr Catherine Tubb of RethinkX, spotlighting their work on radically different mobility solutions and, most recently, the coming disruption of the cow and cow-based industry sectors. Her point was underscored by the following slide, showing increasingly exponential adoption of a range of new technologies:

A series of quick-fire panel sessions drew on the collective wisdom of some stellar speakers, covering ways to step up personally, organisationally, financially, politically and systemically.

Speakers came from such organisations as Aviva Investors, The Body Shop International, the Capital Institute, the CBI, Climate-KIC, Conservation Without Borders, Covestro, Forum for the Future, the Good Growth Company, the Impact Management Project, Neste, the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA), the UK Green Building Council and Women for Women International. Glimpses of some of the sessions follow:

The quality of the discussions and the audience participation was impressive. And the audience numbers held constant throughout the day – a testament to real audience engagement. Some early conclusions can be found here in a summary from Richard Roberts.

Then I took over again for the final session, focusing on the rise of the Green Swan agenda – and announcing the first two prototype Green Swan Awards. They went to Sir Tim Smit of the Eden Project and Sacha Dench, aka the “Human Swan”. Details can be found here.

Here are some images from that session, including Louise (Kjellerup Roper) thanking everyone for coming – and steering them towards the evening reception.