Home

Our Work

In a post-Covid 19 world, the spotlight will expand from corporate responsibility to the resilience and regeneration of systems – our economies, societies, politics and natural environment. We’ve been in the business of systems thinking and systemic change since Volans launched in 2008, so we’re well placed to help you think through how to create significant value as the next normal surfaces all around.

“The world is ready for regenerative change. It’s going to be a complete change of our behaviour as a species in the longer term. It is going to be a step as big as fire was for humanity.” Ties van der Hoeven, The Weather Makers

Join tomorrow’s conversation.
Executive Briefings | Transformational Leadership | Boards and Advisory Boards | Imaginariums | Inquiries | Research | Publications

Executive Briefings

We bring an outside perspective into boardroom or leadership team conversations, based on leading edge research and decades of experience. Every briefing is tailored to the specific organisation and its current challenges.

Our briefings offer you clarity of insight and can also be supplemented with a deeper workshop.

If you would like to start a conversation around what this might look like for your business please get in touch.

Briefing: Resilience and growth after COVID-19

Based on our recent work with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development looking at the consequences of COVID-19 for the 2020s, we offer bespoke briefings to help business leaders understand how they can develop strategies for resilience and future success.

Transformational Leadership

Business-as-usual has destabilised the communities and natural ecosystems on which economic prosperity depends. Encouragingly, there is a growing focus on the need for regenerative strategies as the best way of ensuring long-term economic, social and environmental resilience.

We help companies to identify the actions they can take to move towards a more regenerative business model. In our transformation sessions you will map where you are on the path to regeneration and understand the value to your company of refocusing in this way.

To start a conversation about how we can help you to transform your organisation please get in touch.

We designed the Acciona eXponential Sustainability Leaders programme – a bespoke, transformational change champions programme through which leaders from across the organisation’s global operations co-evolved a proposed vision to drive exponential change.

Boards and Advisory Boards

In turbulent times it is more important than ever to scan the horizon and bring other perspectives into your organisation. With our extensive and varied network stretching generations and geographies, we can help you build the right structure to bring the insight and challenge needed to ultimately deliver of your vision. 

If you would like to find out how this could help you please get in touch.

We convene and chair Neste’s external independent Advisory Council on Sustainability and New Markets – a group of carefully selected experts providing strategic insight, guidance and assistance. Our role is to help the CEO and senior management team to evolve and road test their plans for their accelerating shift into renewable energy and the circular economy.

Imaginariums

Our Imaginariums open the opportunity to grapple with a specific challenge or issue, surfacing fresh insights and thinking on how the business context is changing through unprecedented levels of disruption. 

The two-day process is designed to enable creative, transformative thinking, grounded in facts but unconstrained by current realities. Participants are given permission and the necessary tools to think the currently unthinkable – and to explore challenges and opportunities in a safe space – coming away with an action plan and follow ups as needed.

We are migrating our Imaginariums into the virtual world of working from home. We would love to discuss what is possible for you, so please get in touch.

“The Volans Imaginarium helped us unlock ideas that will smash the dominant business model in our global sector and gives us a chance to create much more value for Scotland.” Terry A’Hearn, Chief Executive, Scottish Environmental Protection Agency.

An Imaginarium session with 25 leaders from Covestro, the manufacturer of high-tech polymer materials, guiding them through a process of transformative thinking on the possibilities of the Circular Economy and the power of positive disruption.

Inquiries

Our Inquiries aim to be systemic game changers. Bringing together those with leadership ambition in business, finance and government to explore, learn and collaboratively shift systemic conditions. These initiatives provide deep insights to those involved, helping them discover how to accelerate the knowledge and growth of what is possible, together. The discoveries and outputs from our Inquiries are made available freely as public goods.

Current Inquiries

Tomorrow’s Capitalism – Phase II

In Phase II (2020-21) we are focusing on accelerating the emergence of what we call ‘Green Swan’ trajectories: exponential market shifts that positively impact people and planet.

We will be exploring how the rules, norms and institutions that shape financial markets need to be – and can be – positively disrupted. With a spotlight on specific examples of emergent Green Swans at the level of individual sectors and countries.

If you would like to find out more about Phase II please get in touch.

We are working with the All Party Parliamentary Group on Fair Business Banking and Re:Pattern on the Bankers for NetZero Initiative bringing together banks, businesses and regulators to enable banks to successfully support their clients, accelerate the transition to net zero and deliver on the UK government’s ambitions for addressing climate change.

“Banks have been a bit late to the game on climate action. I really welcome the Bankers for NetZero initiative because it’s time for banks to catch up.” Nigel Topping, UK High Level Climate Action Champion for COP26

If you would like to be considered for participation in this initiative please get in touch.

Research

Our research translates the trends most likely to shape tomorrow into actionable findings for organisations and businesses. We help identify the key issues and challenges that are going to change the landscape for businesses and their boards, and turn those insights into compelling collateral for leadership teams. A recent example is our work with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development.

What research are you missing to Step Up? Let us know.

We collaborated with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) on two reports as part of its Vision 2050 Refresh. Find both Macrotrends and Disruptions Shaping 2020-2030 and The Consequences of COVID-19 for the Decade Ahead below.

Our research is being used by WBCSD and its member companies to help develop strategies for long-term success in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting opportunities for business to play a part in “building back better”.

The Vault

Here you can find a selection of our past work, still relevant to the wicked problems we face today.

Bankers for Net Zero briefing: The Retrofit Revolution 

Deep retrofitting homes and businesses  is one of the biggest economic, social and environmental opportunities for the UK over the next three decades. It will create jobs, stimulate economic growth, reduce fuel poverty, improve health and wellbeing – not to mention helping to eliminate the 40% of UK greenhouse gas emissions that are produced by the built environment sector. You can find the full Bankers for Net Zero briefing here.

Getting to the tipping point for the deep retrofit market to take off will require a package of policy and regulatory measures. The technologies to retrofit buildings to a net zero standard are largely proven: the challenge is to accelerate the journey from technical feasibility to commercial feasibility.

This briefing offers recommendations to policymakers.

Volans, Re:Pattern and APPG on Fair Banking, 2021

Innovation and Transformation: What it will take to finance net zero

This paper is the latest in a series sponsored by Climate-KIC and UNEP-FI, “Aligning finance to the net-zero economy.”

It hopes to encourage stakeholders that a proactive climate response is not only about disclosing risks, but also about investing in green opportunities that can enable the low emissions societies of the future. This series convenes innovators and industry experts to provoke discussion, challenge the status quo and guide the transformation of business and finance towards a sustainable future.

Volans, Climate-KIC and UNEP-FI 2021

Responsible Retail Banking in the 2020’s

If the opening months of the 2020s are anything to go by, we are in for a bumpy ride this decade. Many businesses and households have experienced an unprecedented financial hit in recent months – and, for some, worse may be yet to come. Retail banks have a critical role to play in helping their business and individual customers first to survive this crisis and, second, to recover from it.

Volans, Business in the Community, Santander, 2020

Reinventing Capitalism: a transformation agenda

The purpose of this issue brief is to lay out why capitalism can and should change – why the time is right for reinvention – and to explore some of the most important shifts that companies can drive, as well as the actions that other stakeholders, including governments and regulators, must take.

Volans and WBCSD, November 2020

The consequences of COVID-19 for the decade ahead.

The pandemic has exposed our vulnerability to systemic shocks, urgently underlining the value of building resilience at all levels – from individual businesses to supply chains to the global economy. This report looks at the opportunities that COVID-19 offers to reset the norms and rules of capitalism in ways that enable businesses and economies to become more resilient and regenerative.

Volans and WBCSD 2020

Macrotrends and Disruptions shaping 2020-2030

This issue brief outlines the macrotrends and disruptions that could shape the environment business operates in over the next 10 years. These represent major shifts in the demographic, environmental, economic, technological, political and cultural landscapes that can be foreseen with a relatively high degree of certainty, though their implications are often more uncertain or ambiguous.

Volans and WBCSD 2020

Procuring a Regenerative Economy

Procurement has a vital – though often under-valued – role to play. The purpose of this paper is to challenge Chief Procurement Officers, sourcing professionals and other business leaders who influence buying decisions to shift their approach in service of a more responsible, resilient and – ultimately – regenerative economy.

This paper is a contribution towards the Tomorrow’s Capitalism Inquiry, which seeks to identify practical pathways towards a future in which markets incentivise economic, social and environmental regeneration.

Volans 2020

The Carbon Productivity Challenge Revisited

Just over a decade ago, the global economy’s Carbon Productivity was going to need to improve approximately tenfold by 2050 (against a 2008 baseline). Today, the challenge is even greater. What was a 10X by 2050 challenge a decade ago has become a 15X by 2050 challenge today, due to sluggish progress over the last decade. What are the implications of this new “climate math”? There are many, but in this paper we start with six that we consider crucial.

Volans 2019

Tomorrow’s Capitalism: The 2020s Leadership Agenda

How does a company become an effective agent of systems change? As part of the Tomorrow’s Capitalism Inquiry, we’re working to distil the best available thinking on this question into actionable guidance
for corporate leadership teams. This publication is a preview of our emergent conclusions.

Volans 2019

Breakthrough Cities: Business Models for Solving Urban Challenges

By 2050, the proportion of the world population living in cities is expected to rise to somewhere approaching 75%. No surprise, then, that many of the global challenges we face today are most urgently manifested in cities. Our goal, outlined in this publication, is to catalyse solutions that address urban challenges at scale, and which can be sustained over time.

Volans 2018

Breakthrough Cities: The Exeter Story

Building a prosperous future will depend on our ability to transform our cities.

Luckily, cities are also our greatest engines of innovation. Unlike companies, which typically begin to favour efficiency over innovation as they scale, cities remain dynamic networks of action and agents of change. But where will the necessary transformation come from?

Volans 2019

Breakthrough Business Models: Exponentially more social, lean, integrated and circular

Tomorrow’s business leaders understand that truly sustainable development is becoming a mainstream priority for a growing number of markets and, in the process, for an ever- extending list of major companies. This publication argues that the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a more radical agenda than most business leaders yet realise.

Volans 2016

The Breakthrough Pitch

The Breakthrough Pitch is designed as a template to help business leaders — including Chief Sustainability Officers (CSOs) — build and present the case for breakthrough change.

Volans 2017

The Stretch Agenda

The emerging Stretch Agenda moves Boards and C-suites firmly to center stage. This publication provides a sneak preview into the future of leadership, suggesting questions, strategies and narratives for the challenges ahead in the Breakthrough Decade, from 2016 to 2025.

Volans 2015

Breakthrough: Business Leaders, Market Revolutions

Business is increasingly critical in tackling the world’s great environmental, social and governance challenges. And at the heart of business sits the C-Suite, the grouping of senior executives who direct the enterprise. Breakthrough is addressed to them—and to those who advise them.

Volans 2012

Investing In Impact

Our guiding question: how might we align the corporate venture capital and impact investment communities around their shared ambitions, objectives and outcomes?

Our findings are outlined through the report, with the final chapter focusing on next steps designed to encourage greater collaboration and syndication to spur and support breakthrough impact ventures.

Volans 2014

Download

Thank you for downloading some of our work. Please let us know who you are, so we can add you to our list for communications. We would love your feedback once you have had a chance to read your download.





By downloading this document you give us permission to email you from time to time. We welcome use of our work; it is subject to Creative Commons, so please do cite us as authors.

Latest from Volans

Bankers for Net Zero briefing: The Retrofit Revolution

Innovation and Transformation: What it will take to finance net zero