Interview with Sustainable Brands Madrid ahead of my presentation in Madrid October 8th. Besides the "All In" book, we cover social intrapreneurism, being a social activist and much more.

Forty years ago this summer, I moved to Newcastle and met David Irwin. Pretty quickly, we started talking about where the new jobs and economic activity would come from the North East. Our conversations led in the summer of 1980 to us giving up our jobs with multinational companies, and starting Project North East – now PNE Group. Our goal was through action-research and practical pilots, to test out new approaches to job and enterprise promotion. We wanted to create an enabling environment that would give people making their own jobs, the best possible chance of succeeding. Today, entrepreneurs wanting the best possible chance of success and aspiring to continue into the indefinite future, need to embed sustainability. In other words, to manage their social, environmental and economic impacts. Delighted to share an extract from All In by Chris Coulter, Mark Lee and I, on the PNE Group blog - specifically aimed at entrepreneurs.

In this blog, I want to argue that being “All In” means that it is much more likely that a business will have an enabling environment which really encourages its employees to bring forward and to implement ideas that will create value simultaneously for the business and for society; in other words, to be social intrapreneurs.

One critical aspect of going All In is having a comprehensive Plan to embed sustainability throughout the business, explaining “What we do and what we aspire to do as an organization.” Think of the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan, M&S’s Plan A or Mars with their “Sustainability in a Generation” Plan.

The networked world means businesses have increasingly less choice about transparency. Those who want to survive and thrive should embrace sustainability, I argue in this new blog for the RSA where I have been a Fellow for more than a quarter-century!

Why the SDGs should force companies to rethink their business models

At some point in life, most of the world’s 7.5billion people will be caring for a loved one. This may be caring for parents as they get older and frailer, a partner with a long-term condition, a son or daughter or sibling with a disability – or it may be a friend or neighbour who needs looking after.