Jun 7, 2022
John is one of the world’s leading authorities on sustainable
development and developed the ‘triple bottom line’ business
strategy. He is the author or co-author of 50 published reports,
thousands of articles, and 19 books, including the no. 1
bestselling The Green Consumer Guide (1988).
In this episode, the following topics are discussed:
- 2019 is the 25th anniversary of the TBL
- People — Planet — Profit
- Accounting vs Purpose
- System change — not the accounting
- Double entry bookkeeping
- 6000 companies are engaging in sustainability reporting
- Branding and advertising — misleading with green
- HBR says this is first time any management concept has been
recalled
- Social entrepreneurs
- TBL is not intended to be a mechanism to support tradeoffs
- Improve on two dimensions, and holding the third constant
- Tomorrow’s capitalism inquiry — Aviva Investors
- Crowdsourcing the revamp — using technology to communicate more
widely
- How does shared value link to the TBL
- Competing language is a glorious alibi to do nothing at
all
- What lies on the horizon for the revamp?We need framework and
tools that drives business in ways that we have not seen yet
- Look at leadership companies, like Unilever, and explore
what
- TBL thinking has delivered in their businesses. (Revamp 1)
- CEO must be on board
- The evolution of B2B platforms — Paul Polman — look at B2B
platforms and look at what is working and what is not — do we need
multiple platforms? (Revamp 2)
- The role of government and policy makers
- Financial markets through the lenses of the CFO and the tie to
sustainabilty (Revamp 3)
- Larry Fink at BlackRock, “Society is demanding that companies,
both public and private, serve a social purpose. To prosper over
time, every company must not only deliver financial performance,
but also show how it makes a positive contribution to
society.”
- Avoiding the label of environmentalist
- John as an agitator —
- ‘Playfulness’ as an indicator of flexibility and embracing
change?
OECD: 80 -90% of companies know a sustainability commitment is
necessary
- Corporate culture —
- The term greenwashing — safety and health diversity are easy to
claim, but a CEO saying it is different than real results— someone
at Board level must be directly responsible for performance
- Climate change, human rights, communicating TBL to Wall Street
→ learning journeys
- The sort of company that does TBL reporting and brand
activism
- Comparing 1970’s corporate leadership to today
- SDGs
- The word ’sustainability’ and it being perceived as something
bad
- A pending financial crash
- Dirty industries proclaiming sustainability — and the need to
call out ranking without looking at what goes on behind the
scenes
- The need to disrupt the ranking industry
- Provoking or calling out bad corporate behavior
- Incremental change is boring — disruption or civilizational
change is more fascinating and engaging
- When words or phrases first appear they are like membranes —
new concepts that engage — the more a term is used it becomes less
engaging
- The forecast that the SDGs will equal 12T in opportunity —
dissecting the number — skepticism and forecasts
- We have moved from looking at sustainability as an impediment
and viewing it as an opportunity and instrument for
transformation
- Big brands that disappear
- Paradigm shifts
John Elkington is the executive chairman of Volans, co-founder of SustainAbility, blogs
at Johnelkington.com, tweets at
@volansjohn.
NOTES
John's
websites
John Elkington
Volans
Other
websites
Aviva
Investors
B
Corp
BlackRock
Business
and Sustainability Development Commission — market
potential of SDGs
DJSI
Fast Company
GlobeScan
GRI
Tech
Mahindra
Unilever
sustainability
WBCSD
Wired
Sample
of John's books
The Green Capitalists by John Elkington and Tom
Burke
The Green Consumer Guide by John Elkington and Julia
Hailes
Cannibals With Forks: The Triple Bottom Line of 21st Century
Business
The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create
Markets That Change the World by John Elkington and Pamela
Hartigan
The Zeronauts
The Breakthrough Challenge: 10 Ways To Connect Today's Profits With
Tomorrow's Bottom Line by John Elkington and Jochen Zeitz, with a
foreword from Sir Richard Branson
Other
books
Thomas Kuhn — The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions
Articles/blogs
ABOUT PHILIP
BEERE
Philip
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