Search Results for: Tim elkington

Between Hallowe’en and Guy Fawkes

Halloween pumpkin in compost bowl Anish Kapor’s ‘The World Turned Upside Down’ Model of new WWF UK ‘Living Planet Centre’ Pandamonium Ditto Ivana, Sam, Patrin, Amy at 2 Bloomsbury Place Patrin, Sam’s camera

Loved the smell of bonfires as I cycled through London last night. Have been profoundly enjoying the Fall (a word I was overjoyed some time ago to find was more English than Autumn) colours as I cycled to and fro this week. One delight is Anish Kapoor’s new installation in Hyde Park, Turning the World Upside Down, which my route takes me past. Took a number of photos earlier in the week, but it was only when I rode past the work yesterday – having accidentally left a bag and camera in the office (in fact outside it, but inside the building) – that I realised that if you look inside the mirrored structure you see the world turned upside down. Colour me slow.

Highlights of the week have included visits to Earthscan, to discuss new book, a meeting of the WWF Council of Ambassadors at 30 Fenchurch Street to discuss things like their proposed new ‘Living Planet Centre’ building in Woking, and a lovely evening at 2 Bloomsbury Place, when Ivana (Gazibara) was due to turn up for a glass of wine after work – and we ended up with Amanda (Feldman), Amy (Birchall), Jacqueline (Lim), Patrin (Watanatada) and Sam (Lakha). Joyous.

One weird thing at the RSA Insurance building in Fenchurch Street – apart from having my slightly less than pinstriped look commented on in the lift to the ninth floor by two very well dressed Americans – was an installation constructed out of something like 100 old WWF panda collecting boxes, that became surplus to requirements. Thanks to televisual trickery, as you stand near the pandas, a few start to turn to look at you, and then they all do. (RSA have a partnership with WWF, see here.)

During the Council meeting, Bernard Donaghue, who chairs the Task Force organising WWF’s 50th anniversary celebrations next year, showed a slide quoting Max Nicholson – a typically striking foresightful comment from decades ago. I said I couldn’t channel Max, despite having worked with him over decades, but noted that if he had been around the table he would be totally happy with plans to celebrate, but would also be forcefully arguing for a hard-hitting assessment of progress over the past 50 years – and arguing the case not simply for a spotlighting of the really nightmarish challenges we face over the next decade, indeed over the next 50 years to 2061.

Once again, he’d be telling us to turn this unsustainable world upside down.

A day in the old Paris Bourse

Eiffel Tower from my hotel room Part of the old open cry trading floor area Jay Whitehead points out piece of old Roman city wall Mirrored Mirrored by the ceiling Ditto Later, Jay gives the guided tour again

Across to Paris, City of Lights (and contrasts), via the Eurostar late last night, to speak at the first CRO Summit in Europe.  Bit of a struggle to find my way into the Palais de la Bourse, but when I finally broke in, I was given my own guided tour by Jay Whitehead – taking in the old open cry trading area and the section of old Roman city wall in the main conference theatre. Extraordinary the imagine all those hundreds of traders in full cry, with a huge heap of sand somewhere on the floor, in which they stubbed out their cigars.

Met a whole bunch of people who are potentially going to be helpful for the new book I’m now planning. Chaired a session with Bouwe Taverne (Director of Sustainable Development at Rabobank), Manlio Valdes (President, EMEIA, Climate Solutions, at Ingersoll Rand) and Gabi Zedlmayer, VP of Global Social Innovation at HP).

In conversation with Manlio and Dirk Olin, Editor of CR Magazine and one of the other moderators for the day, we were discussing how the agenda is becoming ever-more complex for business. I mentioned that I had sometimes suggested that it was sometimes akin to C-Suite folk being put on LSD, noting that I knew of what I spake.

Dirk raced off to get a copy of the latest issue of the magazine, where his editorial is called ‘Tripping Over Work’. It starts with Timothy Leary’s six word mantra: Tune in, turn on, drop out. And the basic idea is that, while users of hallucinogens in the Sixties sometimes became paranoid or depressive, people kept in the dark by business can also suffer a form of sensory deprivation – very much akin to being put into a sensory privation tank.

Dirk quotes a study reported in the October 2009 issue of the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease which found that many people isolated for as little as 15 minutes from normal sensory stimuli results in what is called “faulty source monitoring” – in which we assume that what is going on in our own heads is coming from the outside.  Companies run the risk that their stakeholders will do the same, assume the worst and “drop out”.

Streets of city wreathed in refuse, presumably a result of the ongoing strikes and mass protests. Also more people sleeping in the streets than I remember, which was a striking contrast with the luxurious surroundings of the Palais de la Bourse. And with the meal I had at Brasserie 1925, cheek-by-jowl with Gare du Nord, as I waited for my Eurostar later in the day.

First Volans wine-tasting

Tell shoots the tasters Ale in black, Tell skips for joy Amanda, me, Richard Glass-scape

We have resurrected something that we used to do occasionally at SustainAbility: a blind wine-tasting. In the old days, when we are at the Knightsbridge office, we used to do it competitively, with Tell Muenzing (from Germany) championing European wines and Nick Robinson (from New Zealand) New World wines. This time, Tell did it on his own, with four reds and two whites.

Huge fun – and wonderful to look around the room and see colleagues from Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Singapore, UK and US. There’s a new book out, The Last Lingua Franca, by Nicholas Ostler (Allen lane), who argues that the shelf-life of English (or even ‘Globish’) as a global language may well be limited, with no global language needed by 2050 – thanks to machine translation and related factors. Fascinating thought, but in the meantime I remain keen to build organisations with diverse nationalities involved, to ensure both access to native speakers of key languages and a sensitivity to other cultures.

Graffiti 1 Graffiti 2 Nicholson Building lift operator’s back and braces Elaine photographing in Nicholson Building Kaleidoscopic Retro story in Nicholson Building Sign in Nicholson Building corridor Yarra River, shadowed and sunlit Waste trap – Ian Kiernan would approve Fish sculpture The s-word is everywhere

Started day with breakfast at Rosati, an Italian restaurant at 95 Flinders Lane, which was delightful. Then we wandered across to the Nicholson Building, which Elaine had been encouraged to visit for arts and crafts activities. Weird place. Reminded me of the buildings in the novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, which I read almost a decade ago on the recommendation of Tim Delfgaauw.

Fascinating to visit the Immigration Museum. Reminded us of just how lucky we are to be able to fly places, rather than having to crash across oceans in steerage. Then we went back to the IMAX theatre later in the day, where we saw two 3D films, Dolphins & Whales, by Jean-Michel Cousteau and narrated by Daryl Hannah, which struck me as worthy but very dated, the voice-over off-puttingly pious. By contrast, the Hubble telescope film made great use of 3D technology – and the voice-over, by Leonardo DiCaprio, was fresh and modern.

Flight to Hong Kong left at 23.50. Finished William Gibson’s Zero History, which I had been reading alongside a couple of other books, and which got better as it went along – and then slept for around seven hours. Hong Kong was cloudy and rainy, but we saw some spectacular views of Chinese mountains in cloud as we headed homewards. I slept another eight hours, and could easily have slept some more.

Picked up the latest Newsweek as we went through Heathrow, to see how they have presented the green company rankings we worked on earlier this year. Am quite impressed with the results, though aware – as I have been arguing throughout the Australian trip – that we need to be much more careful on how benchmarking, rating and ranking are done. This is the theme of recent work by SustainAbility, spotlighted in their latest report, Rate the Raters.

Temptress Circe awaits at the top of the Ian Potter Gallery escalator John Davis 1 John Davis 2 Child’s finger pointing at John Davis fish John Davis 4 John Davis 5 Haloes searching for heads John Davis 6 Haloes again No halo due, but missed: I shadow John Lennon at 70

Up early to do the second Qantas Foundation Lecture here at the Stamford Plaza Hotel, this time over a 90-minute breakfast. Then, in the afternoon, across to the Melbourne Business School to lead the second CSI workshop on social innovation.

In between, a phenomenal visit to the Ian Potter Gallery and the National Gallery of Victoria, where – among many other delights – we stumbled across the John Davis exhibition, Presence. Had heard of him ages ago, but had never seen his work in this way. Astounding. One title of a series of artwork he did sticks in my mind: ‘Bent on Mayhem’. Fun to see part of the exhibition with a human wave of children – who loved the diversity of the fishlife on display.

Also very taken with Objects by Mari Funaki, who died earlier this year.