Green Swans: The Coming Boom in Regenerative Capitalism

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Your comments are what make the network the unique space it is, connecting citizens, experts and policy makers in open and respectful debate. An Ugly Duckling is an early-stage concept, mind-set, technology, or venture with the potential to become either a Black Swan (often driven by “bad” exponentials) or Green Swan (driven by “good” exponentials). The second part of the book, ‘Black Versus Green’, describes how slowly, but surely, the Anthropocene paradigms are shifting towards a greener future, and highlights the role of markets and business in this coming revolution. Although a sustainability-inflected recovery is far from guaranteed, Green Swans and Ugly Ducklings can put key elements of the global economy onto an exponentially positive path.

The Italian presidency of the G20 has scheduled July meetings in Venice and Naples and an Oct 30-31 summit in Rome as part of efforts to speed up the global effort on climate change at the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow starting Nov. It is a convenient euphemism but a dangerous one because we don't have the data and will never have it. John Elkington is careful to warn us against misusing the term ‘Green Swans’ to mean simply black swans caused by climate change.

Clouds gather but produce no rain as cracks are seen in the dried up municipal dam in drought-stricken Graaff-Reinet, South Africa, November 14, 2019. So, please step up and play your part in this transition by submitting your suggestions via the forms below . A Green Swan is a profound market shift, generally catalysed by some combination of Black or Gray Swan challenges and changing paradigms, values, mind sets, politics, policies, technologies, business models, and other key factors. In this phase, the Green Swan needs to be solidified and protected against possible disruptions, including wider systemic upsets, otherwise it may not last.

This is very eye-opening book, where the reader is taken on a shock start, by an economist updating his work. Despite the hard work of individuals the postal services are experiencing delays so we can’t guarantee when your book will arrive. In the meantime, I urge you to grab yourself a copy of Green Swans and read it from cover to cover at the earliest opportunity. Resilience is now on many leaders’ lips, with growing numbers of commentators belatedly noting that the intense drive for efficiency through the most recent period of globalisation severely dented many forms of resiliency—economic, social, environmental and political.John asked me what I personally plan to do based on “seeing the nature and scale of the challenge our species now faces” (1:04) … and I might have surprised him by speaking to my personal commitment to re-localise and re-regionalise my work and my renewed commitment to focus on the bioregional scale and how this prompted me to choose the island of Mallorca 10 years ago as the place to explore how to bioregional regeneration can be catalysed. In the same spirit, the title of my most recent book is Green Swans: The Coming Boom in Regenerative Capitalism (Fast Company Press, 2020). We need to embrace uncertainty and discomfort, experiment with new economic and political models, identify opportunities for 10X solutions (improving things by 10% won’t do), and use the Sustainable Development Goals as a North Star to guide it all. In these times if VUCA - volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous - we need steady yet challenging strategies and actions to help us recreate a different world - an economy that is vibrant and enhances rather than depletes, and governance which encourages careful stewarding and radical rethinking towards preservation - and John Elkington's experience and ethos are primed to fulfill these needs.