Current Activities

Advisory & Declaration of Interests

My advisory work remains active, including sitting on various corporate advisory boards and, through my main advisory business, Disruptive Consulting, work with top business leaders on their personal and corporate strategies to drive transformational change and disruptive business success. Clients I am current engaged with (or in recent years):

• Barry Callebaut - World’s leading Zurich based manufacturer of high-quality Swiss chocolate and cocoa products - sourcing 1/5th of cocoa beans grown worldwide.

• BHP - Australian resource company supplying copper for renewable energy, nickel for electric vehicles, potash for sustainable farming and iron ore and metallurgical coal for the steel needed for global infrastructure and the energy transition.

• Danone - a leading French based health focused food and beverage company operating across 3 businesses: Essential Dairy & Plant-Based products, Waters and Specialized Nutrition. Danone is ranked #1 worldwide in both Fresh Dairy Products and Plant Based Food and Beverages, and the first global food company to adopt methane specific climate commitments.

• dsm firmench – a Dutch/Swiss based company who are innovators in nutrition, health, and beauty. Their portfolio includes Veramaris, the first algal based Omega-3 oil that provides a viable alternative to fish oil and Bovaer, a feed supplement for cattle that reduced their methane emissions by 30-45%.

• Fonterra - a farmer owned Dairy Cooperative headquartered in Aotearoa New Zealand, the world's largest exporter of dairy products and a leader in dairy science and innovation.

• Unilever - one of the world’s largest consumer goods companies with over 3 billion people using their products every day in over 190 countries.

• Some clients are engaged on a confidential basis (for commercial reasons and at their request).

Writing

I’m still writing, seeking to interpret global events in the broader and longer-term systemic context that I see very clearly. I do this primarily via Cockatoo Chronicles as far as regular writing goes, but also online in both Twitter and LinkedIn, in articles, papers and special projects like those below. I’m currently focused on developing a new set of articles and papers on the coming disruption to food and agriculture as I discuss further in the writing section of this site.

Recent examples of special projects and papers include:

• Methane, Markets and Food   

• Climate Contagion

• Climate Emergency Defined.

Academia

I continue to conduct research as a Fellow at the University of Cambridge’s Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, focused on “Radical Innovation – Accelerating Clean Disruption”, including teaching senior executive at annual seminars across the globe as part of The Prince of Wales Business and Sustainability Programme.  In line with this I also work actively with a research program we support financially :  The Prince of Wales Global Sustainability Fellowship in Radical Innovation and Disruption.  The purpose of all these areas of work is to develop the academic rigour around radical and disruptive economic change.  I argue this change will primarily be delivered by new disruptive companies rather than the incumbent businesses. Economic history shows this to be the case and the work tests the evidence for this hypothesis.

Advocacy

With accelerating physical climate impacts, the COVID-19 pandemic and dramatic shifts in the market valuations of key companies affected by the energy transition, the world is waking up to the reality of system wide economic and geopolitical risk. This provides increasingly influential opportunities to explain why transformational change is realistic and to engender a sense of hope and belief in what we are capable of.

Below are examples of some of recent opportunities I’ve had to advocate:

• BBC - Climate Change: Ade on the Frontline - Series 1. Ep.1: Soloman Islands and Australia (11 April 2021) watch here

• LGT Vestra - Climate Change: How do investors play their part (28 Jan 2021) watch here

Philanthropy and Activism

With the resources generated from various historical and ongoing business and investment activities, I’m a co-founder and director of Changing Markets Foundation based in the Netherlands and UK. Changing Markets supports market focused NGO campaigns designed to accelerate disruptive change across the economy. I am also involved in many other NGO and think-tank activities as an informal advisor and supporter including in recent years The Climate Mobilization (USA), The Breakthrough Centre for Climate Restoration (Australia) and Extinction Rebellion (UK).

Personal

On a personal level, and now in my mid-60’s, I’m also making sure I have an enjoyable as well as impactful life. I live in rural Tasmania, Australia,  having moved here back in 2011 after writing The Great Disruption and learning, in the research for the book, a great deal about what makes for a happy life. Our entrepreneurial tendencies soon joined up with our belief in the importance of local resilience. This first led to buying a blueberry farm, then developing a community focused tourism business, Port Cygnet Cannery, that was linked to a farm. We put that business up for sale and handed the farm management over to the team who are now operating it as Gardners Bay Farm. After nearly a decade in Southern Tasmania, and with all my kids having left home, Michelle and I decided to make another change and moved up to the East Coast of Tasmania, where we walk on the beach every day. I am shifting my focus to my writing, while travelling to Europe for work as needed.