Green Swans

“John Elkington has once again proven his status as one of the great thinkers of our time.”

–Paul Polman, from his foreword

“Once again, John has found the right words at the right time to help us make sense of what’s going on. The insight, analysis, and reflection in Green Swans is golden. So much of the storytelling and synthesizing resonates with my own experience imagining the enterprises that I want to exist to deliver vital public goods, and then building them with the help of others. Pioneers can see patterns early and have the courage, or naïveté, to just try to add to the design. They can be too early. They can find arrows in their back, too. On surviving and, if lucky enough to succeed, they know the impossible happens and that purpose helps. To those that thought renewables would always be small and expensive, for example, watch that beautiful Green Swan move! It’s time to make friends with the exponential.”

–James Cameron, Chairman of the Overseas Development Institute, Founder of Climate Change Capital, and a former member of the UK Prime Minister’s Business Advisory Board.

"The best leaders are willing to give up what is no longer working and commit to what is needed to succeed in a new, completely changed operating environment. When John Elkington issued a 'product recall' for his groundbreaking concept of the 'triple bottom line,' it was because he is that type of leader. If you want to be a leader that meets the demands of the 21st century, read Green Swans, and then become one."

–Jay Coen Gilbert, Co-Founder of B Lab, the organization behind the B Corporation movement.

“John Elkington is one of the true pioneers in the sustainability movement and has made a real contribution to the way business thinks about its role in the world. With this new book, John uses his exceptional creativity and insight to give us further food for thought on the challenges we face, and alternative and original ways of thinking about them.”

–Dame Polly Courtice, Director of the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL). Also Founder Director of The Prince of Wales’s Business and Sustainability Programme, and Academic Director of the University’s Master of Studies in Sustainability Leadership.

“Green Swans is a brilliant, challenging, and enchanting book. Its brilliance lies in the way John has synthesized and built on the thinking of so many others to put forward yet one more “Big Idea”—which he has done many times before. It challenges executives and investors to think and act at the system level. It is enchanting in the way John weaves autobiography into a compelling narrative to make all of us “qualified optimists.” It is also brave. John puts his e-mail address in this book and invites all readers to engage in a conversation with him. I hope you do. It is always worth talking to John.”

–Professor Robert G. Eccles is Visiting Professor of Management Practice, Saïd Business School University of Oxford, Founding Chairman of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) and one of the founders of the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC).

“Sustainable business legend John Elkington rightly declares that we have painted ourselves into ‘the mother of all corners.’ In Green Swans, his most important book yet, one can feel John’s clever mind and earnest soul wrestling with the ultimate Rubik’s Cube puzzle of all human history: How to transform capitalism to an economic system that is actually regenerative, like all other living systems on this planet. An essential guide for business leaders and a profound yet realistic dose of hope for the challenging ‘Exponential Twenties’ that lie ahead.”

–John Fullerton, Founder of Capital Institute, author of Regenerative Capitalism: How Universal Principles and Patterns Will Shape the New Economy, and former Managing Director of JPMorgan.

“Green Swans is a delightful, disturbing, and hopeful read. As we enter what John refers to as the ‘Exponential Decade’ of the 2020s, the stakes couldn’t be higher for humanity and planet earth. During these turbulent and promising times, I for one am extremely grateful for the steady guidance, wisdom, brutal honesty, and insights John shares here. Drawing on his decades of thought leadership on the role of business in creating a better world, John at once validates the vital role that business will have in innovating and scaling new solutions, but also gives a clarion call—indeed an imperative challenge—to shift from stakeholder value to system value. Green Swans offers a blueprint for the future-fit businesses of tomorrow.”

–Nicholas Haan, Faculty Chair, Global Grand Challenges, Singularity University.

“Capitalism is entering a new phase, as companies and investors acknowledge the need to address the interests of a fuller range of stakeholders. John Elkington, one of the pioneers of the sustainability movement, is a great guide to the changes underway. His critique is clear-eyed, but his underlying optimism about Green Swan solutions is inspiring.” 

– Adi Ignatius, Editor-in-Chief, Harvard Business Review.

“Welcome to the new renaissance. John Elkington does not fall into the trap of painting a dystopian nightmare scenario that leaves us without hope. Instead, Green Swans makes us believe in miracles. Not metaphysical miracles, but those that seem impossible today because we look at their feasibility from a business-as-usual perspective, defined by the status quo. Like John, I am realistically optimistic. Like him, too, I also say ‘neutrality be damned.’ I hope this brilliant book kickstarts new and honest conversations in boardrooms around the world. Conversations about what side of history we are on, and what steps we will now take to become ‘future fit leaders’. Read on to get a sense of where breakthrough mindsets and innovation will take us as we work to deliver the Global Goals. It always seems impossible until it’s done.”

– Lise Kingo, CEO & Executive Director, United Nations Global Compact, the world’s biggest sustainable business platform.

“Our economy urgently needs re-orienting in a green direction, with governments, businesses and civil society taking on—together—ambitious green missions. John Elkington’s Green Swans, paradigm-shifting innovation breakthroughs, point the way to this brighter future.”

–Mariana Mazzucato, Professor in Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College London and Founder/Director of the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose. Author of The Entrepreneurial State and The Value of Everything.

“Japan is one of the most unsustainable advanced nations, with demographic, economic, and environmental challenges. John Elkington explains that all such countries now need to create new generations of Green Swan solutions, driving transformation and regeneration. This book is a perfect guide for a Japan that rose from the ashes and must now learn how to play a significant role in the regeneration of our planet.”

–Hiro Motoki, President, E-Square, Japan.

“When I produced my book 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years as a report to the Club of Rome in 2012, I invited John to contribute an essay on the future role of the military in sustainability. Typically, he is more optimistic than I, although in this new book he balances that out with a clear-eyed view of the “Black Swan” challenges we face in the coming decades. But then his “Green Swans” fly in and we are back on track for rapid progress! I hope he is right, in spite of the fact that my mood in 2052 was more somber—and still is.”

– Professor Jørgen Randers, Professor Emeritus of Climate Strategy at the BI Norwegian Business School, and science-based activist since co-authoring The Limits to Growth in 1972.

“In Green Swans, John Elkington gifts us his wisdom, vision and experience to guide us through the business, social and environmental transformations we need en route to a regenerative future. An urgently necessary book.”

– Cathy Runciman, Co-Founder, Atlas of the Future, and former Managing Director of Time Out International.

“All his life, John has been a pioneer in the environment movement and in his acute understanding of how capitalism has a central part to play in it. His insights have always been ahead of the curve and phrases of his coinage are the currency of our age—the Triple Bottom Line being just one of them. This book captures the passion of a man at the peak of his powers, drawing together a lifetime of observations into a manifesto for muscular humanism and capitalism with conscience. What shines through it all is a belief that now the time is at hand for proving that the future remains ours to make. No hollow intellectualism, just unfettered urging that we should bring out the best in ourselves. . . now. A hugely important book.”

–Sir Tim Smit, Founder and Executive Vice Chair of The Eden Project and Co-Founder of the Lost Gardens of Heligan.

“We need John Elkington’s optimism, and his insight, more than ever, and here he sets out a bracing and inspiring vision of the path we must take if we are to transform ourselves and secure the future for our planet. Green Swans is a welcome and well-researched manifesto and should be compulsory reading in every boardroom.”

–Tanya Steele, CEO, WWF UK.  

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Author has social media following of 20.5K on Twitter @volansjohn

Author owns active blog at johnelkington.com/journal/