Conversations with Green Gurus: The Collective Wisdom of Environmental Movers and Shakers

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John Elkington

John Elkington is a Founding Partner and Director of Volans, a business launched in April 2008. It aims to find, explore, advise on and build innovative scalable solutions to the great global divides that overshadow our future. A co-founder of SustainAbility in 1987 (Chair from 1995 to 2005), John is seen as a world authority on corporate responsibility and sustainable development. In 2004, Business Week described him as ‘a dean of the corporate responsibility movement for three decades’, and in 2008, the Evening Standard named him 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.’

John has authored or co-authored 17 books, including 1988’s million-selling Green Consumer Guide and Cannibals with Forks: The Triple Bottom Line of 21st Century Business (1997), and has written or co-written some 40 published reports. His latest book, The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets That Change the World, was co-authored with Pamela Hartigan, and published by Harvard Business School Press in February, 2008. Through SustainAbility and Volans, he has been working with The Skoll Foundation on a $1 million, 3-year field-building program in relation to social entrepreneurship.

Since 1974, he ...