2008: Volans launches with The Power of Unreasonable People at the 2008 WEF Annual Summit in Davos, where it is handed to 3,000 participants. Co-authored by Volans co-founders John Elkington and Pamela Hartigan, the book (published by Harvard Business Review Press) powerfully shapes the evolving debate on social innovation, entrepreneurship and impact.
2012: Our Breakthrough Capitalism Forum in London signals a more radical change agenda — and heralds a new era of disruptive business.
2013: Volans becomes the first British company to certify as a B Corporation and incubates the B Lab UK organisation in our Bloomsbury offices.
2014: The Breakthrough Challenge, co-authored by John Elkington and Jochen Zeitz, then Chairman and CEO of PUMA — and co-Chair of the new B Team, with Sir Richard Branson (who contributes a foreword to the book).
2015: Project Breakthrough — we launch a joint initiative with the UN Global Compact, with the aim of bringing its 9,000+ corporate members up to speed on the exponential change agenda.
2017: The Carbon Productivity Consortium comes together to develop a 10X approach on climate action. This leads to the New Carbon Economy Inquiry — a Volans-led initiative to advance corporate climate leadership.
2018: The Triple Bottom Line (“People, Planet, Profit”), coined by John Elkington in 1994 and 1995 respectively, are the subject of the first ever product recall of a management concept, published by the Harvard Business Review. Despite significant progress in some areas, the TBL has not yet triggered a transformation of capitalism itself, as originally intended.
2018: Our Tomorrow’s Capitalism Inquiry is now exploring how companies can truly thrive, not in spite of, but because of their commitment to creating value across all three bottom lines.
2020: John Elkington’s 20th book, Green Swans, set out an exponential leadership agenda for the 2020s.