Ideas
John Elkington

John Elkington: “Do-nothing approaches will guarantee breakdown”

Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

19 MAY John Elkington: “Do-nothing approaches will guarantee breakdown”

Last week, we reported on the launch of the Stretch Agenda: Breakthrough in the Boardroom, today we discuss The Stretch Agenda, the Breakthrough decade, and what the future holds with John Elkington.

A world authority on corporate responsibility and sustainable development, John Elkington is a writer and thinker, a serial-entrepreneur and an ‘advisor from the future’. He is Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Volans, a consultancy and think-tank focused on driving market-based solutions to the future’s greatest challenges. John is also Honorary Chairman of SustainAbility. As well as sitting on some 30 boards and advisory boards, he has just released his 19th book alongside Jochen Zeitz, former CEO of PUMA and now co-chair, with Sir Richard Branson, of The B Team.

1. What gets you out of bed in the morning?

I have a pretty good in-built alarm clock, wherever I am in the world, but I set my BlackBerry alarm as back up. In terms of what motivates me, it’s a sense that we are at a critical juncture in the evolution of the relationship between our species and our planet—and it’s a matter of choice whether we go for breakdown or breakthrough.

2. If you could achieve one more thing in your lifetime, however big or small, what would it be?

To help make the stretch version of the sustainability agenda the default setting in the boardrooms and C-suites of the world’s 1,000 most influential businesses. And then get a good sleep …

3. How do you see the world changing in the next ten years?

What a question! The first thing to say is that more change will happen in the next ten years than in the past 15-20. The Boomers, and their priorities, will be elbowed aside by the Millennials and Centennials. The shift of the centre of gravity to Asia and Africa may stutter at times, but is likely to accelerate. Continued introspection and defensiveness in Europe will likely speed the process.

Climate chaos is only just beginning to get into its stride – and the coming decades will see a significantly greater appreciation of both the risks and opportunities. What we call the Breakthrough Decade, from 2016 to 2025, will see the emergence of billion- and then trillion-dollar markets linked to radical decarbonisation of the economy. Someone will own those markets and the wealth that flows from the transition.

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4. You have been spearheading the sustainability movement within business since the beginning, with the launch of SustainAbility and Volans, why do you think we’re still facing the same challenges?

The challenge has always been there—it has just got dramatically more severe as our population climbed from millions to billions. The upside is that our worldview is changing, whether we like it or not. No book had a greater impact of my thinking than Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which I read when I was 14, so half a century ago. Kuhn introduced the concept of paradigm shifts, by which he meant transformations in the way we see our world, transformations that can take 70-80 years to crank through – because a couple of generations infected with the old mindset have to die or retire before the new one can become endemic.

5. What is The Stretch Agenda, in your words?

Do-nothing approaches will guarantee breakdown. Change-as-Usual approaches will simply postpone the evil day. If we are to create economies and societies that can properly sustain 9-10 billion people, and the ecosystems on which they depend, then we need Breakthrough strategies and innovation. The Stretch Agenda is the Breakthrough Challenge tailored for corporate boards and C-suites.

6. What actions do you hope brands will take from The Stretch Agenda publication?

The Stretch Agenda distils conversations we have heard in boardrooms and from C-suites over many years. One of the key voices is that of Jay Shapiro, MN-Co’s Chief Marketing Officer, originally with Google. As he sums up one related trend: “A growing number of apps help consumers to live more sustainable lifestyles and make ethical buying decisions. They cover everything from product credentials to the availability of sharing economy services. We can expect more of this to cascade to the sort of screens we carry in our bags and pockets. Maybe we’re moving from the Green Consumer to the ‘Screen Consumer’?”

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7. How do you expect decision makers will interpret the changes this is outlining and highlighting?

Most will try to ignore it for as long as they can. Where they do change, it will be because they see that, increasingly, they have little choice. Energy security, food security, water security and climate security will help turn some parts of the global economy into political pressure cookers. New types of entrepreneurs will follow in the footsteps of people like Larry Page and Elon Musk. This will often be hard-fought, as we see in the growing global battle to push beyond Peak Coal to an ultimate move from fossil fuels to renewable energy. The rising generation of leaders will take much of this for granted, but will also know that they will have to fight for the market conditions needed to favour more sustainable outcomes.

8. How can we encourage consumers to drive The Stretch Agenda and be actively involved?

There will be huge spikes of concerns around particular issues, and different age groups will evolve different priorities, but ultimately the drivers will be a combination of value and values. Pricing will spur change, and new values will emerge to lock in the new choices, behaviours and lifestyles culturally. This will take a couple of decades, even if the signals of accelerating climate change become increasingly clear, as I expect they will.

9. In your words, how would you define Sustainable Capitalism? And why is this different from today’s definition of Capitalism?

Traditional capitalism treated many social and environmental costs as externalities, no responsibility of the company or industry creating them. New policies and forms of accounting and economics will mean that a growing proportion of those externalities must be externalized. At the same time, investors, business leaders and other capitalist change agents will evolve today’s impact investment techniques to drive new forms of positive impact.

10. The Breakthrough Decade, 2016-2025, has been defined as ‘make or break’. What are the definitive actions that must be taken for us to ‘make’ it?

We may not. But I choose to believe that we can. We will know by the end of the year whether our political leaders are ready to stretch. If they are, the business challenge will be significantly eased, particularly if clear stretch targets are set for years and even decades ahead. If the political consensus can’t be reached, the solutions will still be developed, but the political and economic dynamics will be a good deal more brutal. Political leaders didn’t really know what they were getting into on the threshold of WWI and WWII. Now we have a better sense of what is going to be involved if we are to make our economies genuinely future-fit, but the appetite to plunge into these new waters of risk and opportunity is still conspicuously absent in most world leaders.

21 MAY John Elkington Joins Positive Luxury’s Sustainability Council

Written by Emily Noszkay

We are thrilled to announce John Elkington as the newest member of our UK sustainability advisory council.

Considered a world authority on corporate responsibility and sustainable development, John is credited with coining the ‘triple bottom line’ concept for business. In 2004, BusinessWeek described John as “a dean of the corporate responsibility movement for three decades.”

He has dedicated his life to helping influence, inspire and stretch the thinking of business leaders through informed story-telling and delivering constructive discomfort, all in service of true sustainability and breakthrough innovation.

The sustainability advisory council sits at the heart of Positive Luxury, and supports our company to ensure it is consistently encouraging our community of brands to go beyond compliance and strive to be best in class within their industry. All members of the council provide continuous insight and expertise across all industries and notable topics, as well as supporting the annual review of the screening process. John will particularly support in strengthening and shortening the screening process of potential new members, and advise on future extensions of the Positive Luxury offering.

“John and Positive Luxury have identical goals of placing sustainability at the heart of business and encouraging external story-telling to effectively communicate the actions companies are taking, enabling people to choose brands that are positive for people and the planet,” said Diana Verde Nieto, Positive Luxury CEO and co-founder.

“With John having witnessed the development of my career from very early on, I’m honoured and thrilled to be working with him to better the state of the world, Positive Luxury and our growing community of brands.”

In typically challenging mode, John Elkington explained: “Fashion and luxury are increasingly identified with the 1% rather than the 99%, but it’s easy to underestimate the impact that these worlds have on wider tastes and priorities. We learned that with The Green Consumer Guide, way back in 1988. And no accident, really, that my latest book – The Breakthrough Challenge – was co-authored with Jochen Zeitz, former CEO of PUMA and a board member of Kering, which owns brands like GUCCI and Stella McCartney. I have long admired the work that Diana and her team do, so it’s great to be in a closer orbit.”