Volan Ventures

Volans Story

Initially based in Geneva, London, Oxford and Singapore, Volans Ventures supports the evolution and deployment of scalable solutions to the great global divides mapped in The Power of Unreasonable People. Full details will be released later in 2008.

Volans began to come together late in 2007, during conversations between John Elkington, Pamela Hartigan, Geoff Lye and Sophia Tickell. The central concept is that Volans will work in partnership with other organizations, providing a flexible, highly leveraged means to support innovators and entrepreneurs working to bridge—and ultimately close—the great economic, social and environmental divides that pose such a profound challenge to our collective future.

And our name? We have the flying fish (Piscis or Pisces volans) to thank for that. In Latin, volans meant ‘flying’ or ‘flying thing’— which seemed appropriate as we began to work toward a big jump forward in our field and working lives. Volans is also a constellation in the southern sky, first described in Johann Bayer’s Uranometria in 1603, which brought to mind thoughts of navigation and the deep structure of things.

Volans Ventures is still embryonic, with this beta website providing place-holders for several key components.

Meanwhile, we have a number of strategic relationships, most notably with the Skoll Foundation and SustainAbility, where three of Volan’s co-founders remain on the Board.

Accelerator of Change

Volans Ventures systematically connects and integrates the worlds of social and environmental innovation with business-driven wealth creation.

Volans partners and clients come from four key sectors:

• Social ventures that need help in scaling up their successes in fast-growing and sustainability-driven markets—and in ramping up their efficiency and effectiveness.
• Global corporations, financial institutions and cities committed to growing their businesses and/or economies by reinvigorating their strategies and people—and reinventing their business and/or economic models.
• Public servants and agencies determined to harness the power of social and corporate partners and surrogates to achieve the public good in tougher times.
• Intermediaries serving the above constituencies.

There is new urgency to finding and implementing solutions to critical economic, social, and environmental problems—including climate change, poverty alleviation, access to medicines and human rights.

Innovative solutions already exist. They have been designed, tested, refined and implemented by innovators and entrepreneurs worldwide. Some have found ways to provide high quality drugs and diagnostics to the poor at prices they can afford. Others offer new ways to use information technology to dramatically improve education, health care, and access to credit, insurance and markets for low-income communities. Still others have devised business models that improve access to clean water, affordable housing, more nutritious food and renewable energy.

Volans opens up these high-impact innovations to companies, policy makers and investors so that they can be replicated, scaled and strengthened far beyond what a single entrepreneur and his/her organization could ever hope to achieve.

Based in London, Geneva and Singapore, Volans is spearheaded by a founding team whose members have helped to define the business strategy, sustainable development and social entrepreneurship agendas over decades. They are:

• John Elkington, co-founder of SustainAbility (established 1987) , based in London, New York, Washington, D.C. and, from later in 2008, India. John is a best-selling author, described by BusinessWeek in 2004 as “a dean of the corporate responsibility movement for three decades.” He has served as chair or member of many boards and advisory boards in the public, private and citizen sectors.
• Pamela Hartigan, until recently Managing Director of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship (from its inception) , Geneva, Switzerland, is an author, academic, and former Director at the World Health Organisation (WHO), and Chief at the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO).
• Sophia Tickell, Chairperson of SustainAbility and Director of Pharma Futures is an author and advisor on business, development, healthcare and environmental issues. She was previously Senior Adviser on Private Sector Strategy on extractives, pharmaceuticals, coffee commodities and retail with Oxfam.
• Kevin Teo, Global Leadership Fellow at the World Economic Forum and Head of East and Southeast Asia at the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship. He previously developed enterprise software systems at Silicon Valley startups and now runs our Asia operations from Singapore.

Volans Ventures operates through Volans Connects and Volans Advisory.

SOURCE: http://volans.com/