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 change agency, that aims to stretch leaders – towards “Breakthrough”; that is, to look beyond incremental change towards systemic challenges. Elkington is leading a 2-year program in partnership with the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) focussing on the market opportunities around exponential sustainability, titled Project Breakthrough. He is also Honorary Chairman of SustainAbility, and sits on an A-Z of some 30 boards and advisory boards. He has written 19 books, and his latest is co-authored with Jochen Zeitz, former CEO of PUMA and now co-chair, with Sir Richard Branson, of The B Team. The book, entitled “The Breakthrough Challenge: 10 Ways to Connect Today’s Profits with Tomorrow’s Bottom Line” comes full circle from Elkington’s 1997 “Cannibals with Forks”, where he first introduced the Triple Bottom Line concept. He published The Stretch Agenda in 2015 – a dramatisation spotlighting top team dynamics and conversations in the fictional boardroom of a major global company, and their exploration of the opportunity spaces in the decade running 2016-2025. Volans have labeled this period The Breakthrough Decade.
