Search Results for: Tim elkington

Four years earlier, Che Guevara feels the heat at preparatory session for our 2012 Breakthrough Capitalism Forum

For up-to-date coverage of our work at Volans, please take a look here.

Meanwhile, 2014 marked my fortieth year working professionally in the environmental and sustainability spaces. But I am still not entirely sure how to label what I do. Indeed, I often kick off speeches by saying that when I am asked for my profession by immigration officials, I struggle to find an answer that will be neutral enough not to trigger a cascade of probing questions. ‘Entrepreneur’ or ‘Company Director’ are two that satisfy many officials, but not all. Those descriptions have been true, successively, of such organisations as Environmental Data Services (ENDS), SustainAbility and Volans, all covered in this section.

Other professions I am sometimes tempted to mention are ‘Babelfish’ (as in Douglas Adams’ wonderful living earpiece that would translate all the languages of the galaxy) and ‘Ambassador from the Future,’ in the sense that I try to channel the needs of the voiceless (either because they are powerless or not yet born) into today’s decision-making processes. Another self-description has been “the grit in the corporate oyster,” in the sense that what starts out as an irritant can become the source of longer term value. But going through all of that would be tempting fate with most immigration officials.

In some ways I have been a surfer, detecting rising waves ahead of many and riding them as they built—including the environmental, biotechnology and sustainability waves. And I have been immensely privileged to have visited and worked with literally hundreds of companies around the world, initially as a contributor to magazines like New Scientist, and as founding-Editor of The ENDS Report (launched in 1978) and of Biotechnology Bulletin (launched in 1983 and which I then edited for 15 years). 

Over the years, I have coined a fair few terms that have gone into the language, including ‘environmental excellence,’ ‘green consumer’ and the ‘triple bottom line.’ Even the term ‘sustainability’ was little used when we adopted as our new company’s name in 1987. Indeed, as I have often recalled, we spent the first 3-4 years spelling the word for pretty much everyone who we met or who called. In the process, I have delighted in working with a succession of designers to visualize key aspects of the agenda, including (for over 15 years, Rupert Bassett, who also played a key role in the original design of this website).

Engaging Boards and C-Suites: Part of a cartoon Ingram Pinn of the Financial Times did for me in mid-1990s

Whacked By Hurricane Floyd: a 1999 board meeting of Ben & Jerry’s (I’m at the bottom of the boat)

But in terms of the basics elements of my working life, they include:

• I write (articles, blogs, reports and books, with a listing of my 19 books to be found under ‘Publications’).
• I speak at conferences and other events around the world.
• I lead/direct on ideas—though I would be the first to admit that I am not a natural manager of people or projects, relying on others in my team to ensure the success of the projects I get involved in and the organizations I help launch. I am fortunate to have such people around me!
• I advise/consult for clients in the private, public and citizen sectors.
• I sit on boards and advisory boards (see listing of present—and some past—memberships here).
• I teach (for example, with visiting professorships at the Doughty Centre, Cranfield School of Management/University, Imperial College London, and (my old alma mater) University College London (UCL).

Small world: Dave (Packard) and Bill (Hewlett) open the door on the garage where HP was born

Rather than being disparate strands, these different aspects of my working life feed each other. The consulting I do for companies and other organizations feeds into my writing, speaking and teaching, and vice versa. In terms of the confidentiality vs. transparency balance, we sign non-disclosure agreements with pretty much all our clients, but at the same time it is rare that at least some of that work doesn’t provide content for our more public-facing activities. The photo of  Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, above, was taken during a tour of HP Labs in Palo Alto, HP being a company we have worked with in various ways over the years. I loved the idea of the company’s founders opening the garage doors again to find Earth inside, though multiple meanings could no doubt be extracted.

in terms of the interplay between thought-leadership and advisory roles, a key reason I was involved in the 1999 Ben & Jerry’s board meeting that was to decide whether to sell out to a larger company, for example, was that I was identified with the triple bottom line agenda. But things soon went adrift: just as I arrived on Cumberland Island, off the coast of the US state of Georgia, Hurricane Floyd blew up and we all had to decamp back to the mainland, and take part in a slightly harrowing mass migration inland.

Both at SustainAbility and Volans, I have always felt part of a wider community of business people evolving the corporate responsibility, transparency, accountability and sustainability agendas, and it was a particular delight when both Volans and Sustainability became certified B Corporations in 2013, with Ben & Jerry’s and Patagonia among the larger B Corps.

As the agenda has evolved, I have worked with some leaders over many years. Patrick Thomas, on the right in the photo below, was just becoming CEO of ICI Polyurethanes when I first worked with him in the early 1990s. Today we work with him as the CEO of Bayer MaterialScience. (Incidentally, we don’t insist that all our clients wear green ties: that was a Bayer theme for the 2013 K-Fair in Dusseldorf.)

Richard Northcote, Celina Chew and Patrick Thomas of Bayer MaterialScience at K-Fair 2013 

Since 2008, I have mainly carried forward these professional activities through Volans. The name comes from the Latin for something that flies, as in the case of Pisces volans, the flying fish. For more personal work, I developed a couple of platforms over the years, John Elkington Associates (founded in 1983 and later largely absorbed into SustainAbility) and CounterCurrent. 

We are compulsive collaborators, working with a wide range of other individuals, organisations, initiatives and platforms. For several years, for example, we have worked with The B Team, co-chaired by Sir Richard Branson and Jochen Zeitz, the latter a former CEO of PUMA and my co-author on the latest book, The Breakthrough Challenge.

Spoof Branson poster at The Economist‘s HQ

Much of our work is built around ongoing conversations, which is why I once responded to a question from a delegate at an Australia conference (he asked in a plenary session what strategic tools we relied on) by saying that our most important strategic tool was our sofa. That’s still the case, though these days it’s sofas.

The door’s open.

Speaking at a Canadian study tour session in London

On real grass: I spoke to four separate groups of 40 top executives from Tetra Pak in this grassed conference space in 2010

Preparing for a Telekon conference in Vienna in 2009, then I got to drive a Tesla

Speaking in Sydney, long ago, during one of the annual multi-city tours organized by Murray Edmonds, in Oz and NZ

By now, I have spoken at more than 1,000 conferences and other events, from village halls through to major convenings like the Skoll World Forum (which I have attended since the outset) and the World Economic Forum (where from 2002 I was on the faculty for seven years). I am still routinely surprised to find myself addressing large numbers of people, since I was at times paralytically shy as a child. But needs must.

All speaking engagements are dealt with through Volans, via Yinka Awoyinka (yinka@volans.com).

For a sense of how these things go, here are a few videos:

• B Corp Summit, Amsterdam, 2019
• Project Breakthrough, video interview, 2017
• PE International, Stuttgart, Germany, 2014
• Bayer MaterialScience event, K-Fair,Düsseldorf, Germany, 2013
• Breakthrough Capitalism Forum, London, 2012
• WOBI/World of Business Ideas, Sao Paolo, Brazil
• Insead, Fontainbleau, France/Singapore, 2012
• Singapore International Foundation, Singapore, 2011
• Institute of Family Business, Liverpool/London, 2011
• IMD, Lausanne, Switzerland, 2009

Background

The first public speech I made, aged 11—and I was very nervous—was to my fellow pupils at Glencot Preparatory School, near Wookey Hole in Somerset, back in 1961. I invited them (perhaps 80 in total) to give me their treasured pocket money for two weeks—and got it. The money was to support the fledgling World Wildlife Fund (WWF), which had launched that year. For many years, in more recent times, I have been a member of the WWF UK Council of Ambassadors.

One form of speaking I particularly enjoy involves engaging with the new generation of students. To my surprise, I find myself a Visiting Professor at the Doughty Centre for Corporate Responsibility, Cranfield University, at Imperial College and at my alma mater, UCL. It is a delight that a fair few such engagements result in students joining us for projects and internships.

One of the great pleasures of working in these fields has been the growing engagement of bright young people (see above) and with activists and social entrepreneurs from around the world, among them (below) Vera Cordeiro of Associação Saúde Criança and Laura Uplinger, both from Brazil. A world class social entrepreneur, Vera was later a member of the Volans Advisory Board.

Welcome.

This is the latest round of an experiment that began more or less with the new century. Indeed, this is now version 5.0 of a website that has routinely scrambled the personal and professional, a scrambling that has been the very essence of my life.

For details of my latest books see Ticking Sharks: How We Sold Business on Sustainability (Fast Company Press, June 2024) and Green Swans: The Coming Boom In Regenerative Capitalism (Fast Company Press, April 2020).

For the story in brief, my latest CV/bio can be found on the Volans website, here. 

Background

Then there’s the slightly longer version, written four or five years ago:

Speaking at a 2degrees Network lunch event in April 2014, I had to introduce myself after folk from the House of Lords, business and the financial community had already spoken, citing long lists of roles and honours. I began by saying that, unlike them, I am still trying to work out what it is that I want to be when I grow up.

There was laughter around the table, but my point was semi-serious. My life has been very much a work-in-progress, with one unexpected turn in the trail leading to another. Which is why I suggested that one of the founding values for Volans should be “serendipity”.

 And that process of creating one’s own luck has played through powerfully in relation to each of the roles I have played over the years.

I celebrated my 70th birthday in 2019, an event that started out as a birthday party and ended up as Green Swan Day, captured here on film. Yet I genuinely feel that the best decade—the decade where the movements of which I am part can have the greatest impact—lies ahead.

As to where it all began, the story began a long time ago. Part of the answer is Mill Cottage, Padworth, where I was born—surrounded by nature. But the first moment when I can recall awakening to the natural world was in a field on a dark moonless night in Northern Ireland in the 1950s, while walking home alone through an area of disused flax ponds, and finding myself surrounded by thousands of baby eels, or elvers.

I told this story in the New York Times in 2012.

Then came Cyprus in the late 1950s, with further wildlife encounters. But things really began to get serious in 1961, when I found myself raising money from the other boys at prep school, Glencot, for the fledgling World Wildlife Fund.

For many years, I couldn’t recall why that had happened—but then, much later, I would meet two of WWF’s founders, Max Nicholson (with whom I co-founded ENDS) and Sir Peter Scott who, among other things, was one of the judging panel that awarded me a Sir Winston Churchill travelling fellowship in 1981.

Max recalled that WWF had attracted front page coverage in one of the leading newspapers in 1961—and as soon as he said that I remembered going into the school library, reading what must have that very edition of the newspaper, and some sort of circuit was formed. (During 2011, I would take part in a number of celebrations of WWF’s 50th anniversary, in large part because of my role as a member of the WWF UK Council of Ambassadors.)

But something in me has always pushed toward the edge—and it was with the launch of groups like Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace in the early 1970s that I felt properly part of a movement. Partly as a result, I was inspired in 1972 to go to UCL’s School of Environmental Studies (now the Bartlett School) as a stepping stone into the environmental mainstream.

As a result, I was already working with John Roberts in 1974 at TEST, in Covent Garden, when Lovelock’s New Scientist article appeared—and, as indicated by the fact that our first daughter would be named Gaia in 1977, that article had a profound impact. 

Later in 1975, as luck would have it, I too started to write for New Scientist, producing a series of feature articles for the then Editor, Bernard Dixon. Initially, these looked at how ecological thinking was beginning to permeate government (in places as disparate as Egypt and the UK), but later I began to focus on companies, among them BP, British Gas and English China Clays. 

In ENDS, a new beginning

And from that came Max Nicholson’s invitation in 1978 to join him and David Layton (of Incomes Data Services) in setting up Environmental Data Services (ENDS). The aim: to wake up the business world to the environmental agenda.

From that point on I had a much better sense of my life’s purpose and focus, but—once again—I had little idea as to just where the path would take me.

As described elsewhere on this site, the intervening years have seen my serve on over 70 boards and advisory boards, co-found four social businesses (all of which still exist in some form) and write or co-author of 21 books and 50 published reports.

If you have ideas as to how this story might usefully go forward, my email address is either john@volans.com or john@johnelkington.com.