Green Swans: The Coming Boom In Regenerative Capitalism

by John Elkington

Overview

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.

If Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s “Black Swans” are problems that take us exponentially toward breakdown, then “Green Swans” are solutions that take us exponentially toward breakthrough. The success—and survival—of humanity now depends on how we rein in the first and accelerate the second.

Green Swans draws on Elkington’s first-hand experience in some of the world’s best-known boardrooms and C-suites. 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. 

This book is a must-read 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781732439122
Publisher:	Fast Company Press
Publication date:	04/07/2020
Pages:	296
Sales rank:	199,156
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

John Elkington is a writer, thought-leader, serial entrepreneur, and, at heart, an environmentalist. Described as the “Godfather of Sustainability,” he has now written or co-authored 20 books, including the million-selling Green Consumer Guide series.

Elkington has worked with many scores of corporations, often at the board and C-suite level, as well as with the financial community, industry bodies, government, the media, NGOs, academia, innovators, and entrepreneurs. Along the way, he has co-founded four social-purpose businesses since 1978, including Environmental Data Services (ENDS, 1978), John Elkington Associates/CounterCurrent (1983), SustainAbility (1987) and Volans Ventures (2008). All four still exist and the last two were respectively the second and first certified British B Corporations in the U.K.

Over the years, Elkington has also served on over seventy boards and advisory boards, advising companies, non-profits and policy-making organizations. He is a visiting professor at the Cranfield School of Management, as well as at Imperial College London and University College London (UCL).

In 2004, BusinessWeek described Elkington as “a dean of the corporate responsibility movement for three decades.” He has received many awards and honors, including from the United Nations (Global 500 Roll of Honour, 1989). In 2005, he landed a “Social Capitalist of the Year” award from Fast Company, and that year was also awarded a three-year, $1 million field-building grant from the Skoll Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship. In 2011, he was awarded the Spencer Hutchens, Jr. Medal by the American Society for Quality (ASQ), for “outstanding leadership, as an advocate for social responsibility, and for bringing about positive social change.” In 2014, he was awarded the Recycla/El Mercurio International Prize in Chile and in 2015 the Ethical Corporation Lifetime Achievement Award.

Table of Contents

Welcome: Upending Capitalism 1

Today's capitalism is unfit for purpose-and its getting worse.

Foreword: Paul Polman 17

Introduction: Diving Into Tomorrow 21

The exponentially different worlds of Black, Gray, and Green Swans.

Chapter 1 Miracles On Demand 40

Miracles can be impossible within one paradigm, inevitable in the next.

Part I The Black Swan Blues 75

Key trends pushing and pulling us toward breakdown.

Chapter 2 A Wicked World 76

Why the world is becoming increasingly "wicked," even "super wicked.'

Chapter 3 Black Swan Capitalism 90

Current capitalism robs the future to reward some of those alive today.

Part II Black Versus Green 117

Black, Gray, and Green Swans are battling it out all around us.

Chapter 4 Swanning Round Boardrooms 118

How incumbent boards and C-suites view the relevant challenges.

Chapter 5 Getting Future Fit 144

A blueprint for Green Swans: How to create system value.

Part III New Pecking Orders 165

Green Swans will upend current market realities.

Chapter 6 Incubating Ugly Ducklings 166

Why "Ugly Ducklings" seem ugly today-but won't tomorrow.

Chapter 7 Green Swans Take Off 189

Politicians, governments, and markets must boost Green Swans.

Chapter 8 Exponential Migrations 219

How we get from here to there-faster.

The Author 249

Acknowledgments 251

Annex: The Swanspotter's Guide 1.0

How to distinguish between Black Swans and Green 254

Endnotes 257

Index 273

Editorial Reviews

01/27/2020

A thoughtful if self-aggrandizing call for sustainable capitalism arrives from social entrepreneur Elkington (coauthor, The Breakthrough Challenge). Expanding on Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s 2007 book, The Black Swan, an exploration of unpredictable and large-scale events, Elkington introduces green swans, which offer “systemic solutions to global challenges.” He predicts an approaching crisis in the world economy, with at stake whether democracy and sustainability—a term which, he informs readers, he coined—can coexist with capitalism. The most likely outcome, Elkington posits, is that capitalism will falter or crash entirely, only to reemerge in a more environmentally and socially responsible form. He discusses how the reluctance to face deep-seated issues under a free-market system that privileges short-term thinking can lead to disaster, comparing the oil business’s attitude toward climate change to how the tobacco industry refused to deal with its products’ health risks. In the long term, though, Elkington believes the future will belong to forward-thinking and responsible leaders, such as Marc Benioff, the co-CEO of software company Salesforce, who calls for taxes to go up, not down, on high earners like himself, to aid social spending. Enthusiastic about change, Elkington offers a much-needed shot of optimism. However, the derivative nature of the ideas within, and the author’s inability to skip any opportunity to sing his own praises, is likely to leave readers feeling unfulfilled. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly