Tim Smit KBE

JLA Client Comments

Q & A

JLA: How do you inspire people to embrace innovation?
TS: There's no mystery. Enlightened organisations profit by opening up to change. Leaders need to show successful examples of innovation, help the resistant to overcome their fear and explain the risk of doing nothing.

JLA: How should business react to climate change?
TS: The deadline we face is the first in history set by nature, not man - and only those who recognise that will thrive. Although there are climate change deniers, there are few who deny that we could work better with the grain of nature.

JLA: Can green technology really come to the rescue?
TS: Eden has commissioned the first commercial geo thermal plant. When it comes onstream in 2012 it should change perceptions of this renewable resource. More than 10% of all UK energy needs could be met from Cornwall alone.

EXTRACT FROM JLA SPEAKERS BREAKFAST

A hundred years from now, the next ten years will be seen as a period equivalent to the start of the renaissance or the reformation. The problem is we are used to small change, but do we have the ability to make exponential change? Because this is what it is going to take. Humans can only change exponentially if we can capture the spirit of war - so how do we harness this in a time of peace?

Climate change is happening but actually we need it really badly - we have become smug and complacent and an awful lot of people are yearning for something they can collectively put their shoulders to the wheel to combat. That's where we want our brightest and best to be - and we need to be thinking really radical thoughts, not just small change.