Mark Goyder founder director of Tomorrow's Company appeared in an online Question & Answer session with Kai Peters, Chief Executive of Ashridge Business School to coincide with the launch of the FT's new series on 'The Future of the Company' on Tuesday 11 October between 3 and 4pm UK time. Read a more from the session here.

As a Research Volunteer at Tomorrow’s Company, I’ve had the privilege of listening in on some of the most inspiring conversations  out there about THE FUTURE . I would like to share one of those conversations here. The Force for Good New Pioneers workshop, that took place last Thursday at InterfaceFLOR, brought together a fantastic group of Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) savants from some of the biggest name companies out there.  Tania Ellis talked about her new book ‘The New Pioneers: Sustainable Business Success and Through Social Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship’; Ramon Arratia (Sustainability Director EMEA at InterfaceFLOR) talked about Full Product Transparency - a huge step forward in Interface’s journey to zero impact - and creating a wide-reaching Force for Good learning community was also discussed.

There is something stirring, the sound of business leaders coming to terms with the new demands of leadership in the twenty-first century.

It is the recognition that business as usual cannot be the business model which delivers future success; that more of the same is not sufficient to provide escape velocity from the gravitational pull of the black hole that drew us into the credit crunch; that as fears of double-dip recession still haunt our nightmares, there must be new behaviours and new areas of strategic focus that need to be uppermost in the minds of business leaders, day by day.

To avoid another credit crunch we cannot rely on regulation alone

 

The proposal from a cross-party commission for a "Hippocratic oath" which would "require bankers to take into account the impact of their activities on the wider economy and on society, rather than focusing on making a short-term profit" directly addresses the need to reconcile values and value creation.