John Elkington

World authority on corporate responsibility and sustainable development.

Founding Partner & Executive Chairman of Volans. Author of «Green Swans: The Coming Boom in Regenerative Capitalism».

John Elkington speaker, green swans, volans

John Elkington, Co-Founder & Chief Pollinator at Volans, is one of the founders of the global sustainability movement, an experienced advisor to business, and a highly regarded keynote speaker and contributor, from conferences to advisory boards.

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John Elkington is a world authority on corporate responsibility and sustainable development. He is currently Founding Partner and Executive Chairman of Volans, a future-focused business working at the intersection of the sustainability, entrepreneurship and innovation movements.

Is one of the founders of the global sustainability movement, an experienced advisor to business, and a highly regarded keynote speaker and contributor, from conferences to advisory boards.

In 2008, The Evening Standard named John among the ‘1000 Most Influential People’ in London, describing him as “a true green business guru”, and as “an evangelist for corporate social and environmental responsibility long before it was fashionable”.

In 2009, a CSR International survey of the Top 100 CSR leaders placed John fourth: after Al Gore, Barack Obama and the late Anita Roddick of the Body Shop, and alongside Muhammad Yunus of the Grameen Bank.

To date, John Elkington has spoken at more than 1,000 major conferences and similar events. Everything from major convenings like World Economic Forum summits in Davos and Dalian, China, through to high-octane boardroom sessions and talks to universities, business schools and village halls.

John Elkington has won numerous awards and is the author or co-author of 19 books. His latest book is Green Swans: The Coming Boom in Regenerative Capitalism (Fast Company Press, April 2020), where using case studies, real-world examples, and profiles on emergent technologies, Elkington shows how the weirdest “Ugly Ducklings” of today’s world may turn into tomorrow’s world-saving Green Swans.

His lectures are very interesting for business leaders in corporations great and small who want to help their businesses survive the coming shift in global priorities over the next decade and expand their horizons from responsibility, through resilience, and onto regeneration.

Green Swans: The Coming Boom in Regenerative Capitalism.

Revolutionary innovation for sustainable development.

Energy efficiency.

Understanding Corporate Social Responsibility.

Climate Change: The decisive decade.

Green IT.

Green Swans: The Coming Boom in Regenerative Capitalism.

Even leading capitalists admit that capitalism is broken. Green Swans is a manifesto for system change designed to serve people, planet, and prosperity. In his twentieth book, John Elkington--dubbed the "Godfather of Sustainability"--explores new forms of capitalism fit for the twenty-first century.

Green Swans: The Coming Boom in Regenerative Capitalism.

The Zeronauts: Breaking the Sustainability Barrier.

A world of 9 billion people by mid-century will demand fundamental changes in our mindsets, behaviors, cultures, and overarching paradigm. Just as our species broke the Sound Barrier during the 1940s and 1950s, a new breed of innovator, entrepreneur, and investor is lining up to break the Sustainability Barrier. In this book, John Elkington introduces the Zeronauts – a new breed of innovator, determined to drive problems such as carbon, waste, toxics, and poverty to zero – as well as creating the first Zeronaut Roll of Honor, spotlighting 50 pioneers in the field of zero. Zeronauts are innovating in an astonishing range of areas, tackling hugely diverse economic, social, environmental, and governance challenges. To give a sense of progress to date, we zero in on five key challenges (the 5Ps): population growth, pandemics, poverty, pollution, and proliferation.

The power of zero has been trumpeted, notably in relation to zero defects. This book spotlights key lessons learned in the field of total quality management – and introduces a five-stage "Pathways to Zero" model, running through from the Eureka! discovery moment to the point where a new way of doing things becomes endemic in the economy.

In order to move from incremental to transformative change, we must embrace wider framings, deeper insights, higher targets, and longer time scales. This book investigates some ways in which leading Zeronauts are pushing change in relevant directions, with cases drawn from a spectrum of human activity – from water profligacy to human genital mutilation. If we learn from these pioneers, the twenty-first century could be our best yet.

The Zeronauts: Breaking the Sustainability Barrier.