The Breakthrough Challenge: 10 Ways to Connect Today's Profits With Tomorrow's Bottom Line

by John Elkington, Jochen Zeitz, Richard Branson (Foreword)

The world’s most forward-looking CEOs recognize the real challenge facing business a fundamental shift in the nature of commerce. While sustainability programs, government action, and nonprofits are all parts of the solution, CEOs and other leaders must focus on social, environmental, and economic benefit—not only because it will make the world a better place, but because it will ensure lasting profitability and success in the business climate of tomorrow.

The Breakthrough Challenge is both an inspiring call-to-action and a guide for this transformation, based on the work of The B Team, a major initiative uniting leaders in sustainability. As a founding advisor and member of The B Team, John Elkington and Jochen Zeitz map out an agenda for change. The most important goal for businesses must be redefining the bottom line to account for true long-term costs throughout the supply chain. To achieve this, leaders must rethink what counts on balance sheets, how to incentivize performance, who does what in the C-suite, and even what inspires us. The Breakthrough Challenge draws on over 100 exclusive interviews to show this shift in action, sharing the pioneering work of leaders such as Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever; Arianna Huffington, founder and CEO of The Huffington Post; Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, chairman of the Nestlé Group; and Linda Fisher, pioneering Chief Sustainability Officer at DuPont, among many others.

Change-as-usual strategies are not enough to move business from breakdowns to breakthroughs. The Breakthrough Challenge shows leaders how to achieve a true transformation and refocus the definition of profitability on the lasting wellbeing of people and planet—for the lasting success of their business.

231 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 22, 2014

About the author

Professor John Elkington is an Executive Director of SustainAbility Ltd. A leading authority on the role of industry in sustainable development, he is a consultant to such organisations as BP, Procter & Gamble, USAID, and the UN Environment Programme.
He sits on advisory panels at the Merlin Ecology Fund and the Nature Conservancy Council. He has authored or co-authored numerous books and has published several hundred reports, papers and articles for a wide variety of journals, magazines and national newspapers.
On World Environment Day in June 1989, John Elkington was named to the United Nations Environment Programme's 'Global 500 Roll of Honour' for his 'outstanding environmental achievements'.

Reviews

[รพีพัฒน์ อิงคสิทธิ์ · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book clearly communicates about what the challenges we face on the long road to sustainability. From the traditional capitalism malfunction to Biomimicry adaptation, the writer sheds some light in to the fields that some business leaders say it's not possible. From my point of view, the writer explicitly supports for radical change and invite the reader to join this revolution. I agree that the social and environmental issues are urgent but the extreme solutions may not attractive for the mainstream people.

[c e robinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rough notes and further reading from chapters:
B-team and plan b agenda
Happy planet index /gross national happiness
"Zeronauts" = folk campaigning for net zero
System change needed - incrementalism not gonna cut it
Leaders need to lead, not follow govmt or ngos
Traditional business groups like US chamber of commerce continue to support unsustainable business practice
CFOs need to become involved in real, complete accounting - internalising externalities
Positive as well as negative externalities should be included in full cost accounting - but watch out for greenwashing
we need Investment led growth over consumption led growth
We’re in ‘ecological overshoot’ - earth overshoot day getting sooner each year
Education - call for Business school ‘product recall’ - ensuring those trained on single bottom line economics need to come back to learn the new models
Choice editing can help issues like obesity
George Bernard shaw quote:"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

- History of nestle, Unilever, body shop & virgin business structures
- APEC businesses
-A4S accounting for sustainability
-Look up TEAB
-SCDI standard chartered dev index
- Social progress capacity index - ways to measure country economic development and social progress
- Better life index
- Gramene bank
- scholl foundation
- Search - mapping value webs
- Future communities and the young foundation - report on infrastructure
- Investigate perverse subsidies
- The future company
- WBCSD
- TI - transparency international
- Ecovadis paris
- GRI guidelines on reporting - integrated reporting
- Read shell sustainability report
- GFN - glob all footprinting network
- Ellen McGill - pwc
- Puma's ep&l ‘natures invoice’
- MacArthur foundation
- Review Kingfishers targets and incentives
-Net impact student group - conference
-Barclays Antony Jenkins experiential training for leaders
-Look into Schmitt MacArthur fellowship
-Deloitte social innovation pioneers
-‘Beyond grey pinstripes’ mba programme index
-https://www.c40.org/
-FTSE for good/dow jones/Xprize