Reporting 3.0 Conference Launches Transformation Journey: From Mono-Capitalism to Multi-Capitalism, Integrated Accounting, and Integral Business Models

June 12, 2018 /3BL Media/ - Mono-capitalism, with its singular obsession on financial capital, has fueled growth in global economies and markets that ultimately threatens sustainability and broad prosperity. The resulting megatrends, such as climate change and dangerous wealth disparities, require fit-to-task responses – most notably, transitioning to multi-capitalism as the new operating system for our markets. At its 5^th International Conference at KPMG in Amsterdam on June 12-13, Reporting 3.0 is releasing a Transformation Journey Blueprint – as well as a Blueprint for Integrated Accounting and a Blueprint for Integral Business Models – to guide all actors to contribute productively to the shift from degenerative to regenerative economies.

International Integrated Reporting Council CEO Richard Howitt kicks off the Conference with a Keynote unveiling an exciting new partnership to accelerate this transition.

“This week, we are announcing that the IIRC and Reporting 3.0 are beginning collaboration on a new White Paper on multi-capitalism, which we believe can be an important next step in developing a deeper understanding of the implications of a multi-capitalist approach, as well as helping embed integrated, multi-capital thinking more widely in business,” said Howitt. “As unapologetic multi-capitalists, the two organizations will set out a pathway for a transition to system change and to articulate the role of multi-capitalism in sustainable development.”

To articulate these ideas in more depth, Howitt and Reporting 3.0 Managing Director Ralph Thurm co-authored an article published today on Thomson Reuters.

“There is no sustainable business in an unsustainable world,” says Thurm. “To achieve intergenerational sustainability and prosperity for all, Positive Mavericks in key sectors across the board – business, investment, government, philanthropy, civil society, academia, and others – must radically collaborate to transform our global economy into a multi-capitalist operating system.”

Reporting 3.0 Senior Director Bill Baue, who will co-manage the project going forward, explains in more depth:

“Multi-capitalist thinking reveals how ongoing value creation requires managing both horizontal and vertical dependencies: on the former, dynamic balance of all capitals upon which business models depend, in order to maintain healthy stocks and flows; on the latter, coordination amongst actors and institutions at different levels, to manage the aggregation of individual impacts into collective effects on the carrying capacities of capitals in the Commons,” Baue said. “This expanded scope synthesizes broader societal factors that are integral to holistic management and decision-making.”

Celebrating “Lustrum” with Three New Blueprint Releases

Dutch culture celebrates fifth anniversaries as a “lustrum,” so in honor of its fifth Conference, Reporting 3.0 invited Volans Chair and Chief Pollinator John Elkington, who keynoted the third Reporting 3.0 Conference, to share his thoughts via video. Reporting 3.0 is also celebrating this fifth Conference (centered on the theme Context for Thriveable Transformation) by releasing three final Blueprints to fully round out its “Work Ecosystem”: the Accounting Blueprint, New Business Models Blueprint, and Transformation Journey Blueprint.

• The Accounting Blueprint, lead authored by Reporting 3.0 Steering Board and Operating Team Member Cornis Van Der Lugt, proposes new Integrated Accounting featuring multi-capital, multi-layered balances sheets, income statements, and statements of long-term risks and value creation.
  
  • The Final Report of the Blueprint can be downloaded here.
• The New Business Models Blueprint calls on startup entrepreneurs as well as intrapreneurs in existing companies to design new Integral Business Models that scale up New Industry Ecosystems and New Integral Economies.
  
  • The Final Report of the New Business Models Blueprint can be downloaded here.
• The Synthesis Blueprint distills all four Blueprints (also including the Reporting Blueprint and Data Blueprint released at last year’s Conference) into a singular statement, and unveils a Transformation Journey Program (structured around the metaphor of a mountain climb) as the avenue for organizations of all stripes to collaborate on piloting and activating Blueprint Recommendations.
  
  • The Final Report of the Synthesis Blueprint can be downloaded here.

Reporting 3.0 will now offer a host of engagement and collaboration opportunities under the Transformation Journey Program, including Webcasts, Workshops, and Coaching by r3.0 Advocation Partners. All are oriented toward advancing fit-to-task practices aligned to systemic imperatives.

Speaker quotes about these Blueprints and other Conference elements appear in the Appendix to this release.

Global Thresholds & Allocations Council Update

The Conference also features an update on the Reporting 3.0 Global Thresholds & Allocations Council (GTAC), following up on its January 2018 Kickoff Meeting in Amsterdam. Global Reporting Initiative Co-Founder Allen White and Center for Sustainable Organizations Founding Director Mark McElroy (who are both Advocation Partners) will speak at the Conference in support of the 2019 launch of the GTAC.

To engage in the Conference remotely, please follow Reporting 3.0’s Twitter handle (@Reporting3org) and hashtag (#Reporting3). After the Conference, Reporting 3.0 will post all speaker presentations on its 2018 Conference Website, and will issue a Report summarizing the Conference.

Contact:

Ralph Thurm
r.thurm@reporting3.org

Bill Baue
b.baue@reporting3.org

Note to Editors: The White Paper on Multicapitalism (and the carrying capacities of the capitals) will be a joint publication of Reporting 3.0 and the IIRC scheduled for release in 2019 that will lead to a roadmap on how integrated thinking in companies can be translated into a system with multi-capitalism at its heart for markets around the world.

Appendix: Speaker Quotes

On Multi-capitalism

Sarah Grey, Markets Director, International Integrated Reporting Council:

"As a Reporting 3.0 Steering Board member I am excited to see the development of the Reporting 3.0 Blueprints, now all released, along with a 5th strategic summary that identifies and connects the main propositions that business and others can take action on for better outcomes and a sustainable, inclusive economy. This important work, including the ideas it shares with the Integrated Reporting Framework about value creation across multiple capitals, will help transform not only business thinking but also the functioning of our markets from 'mono-capitalism' to multi-capitalism. The IIRC looks forward to continuing our collaboration on the idea of multi-capitalist thinking, which is so critical to the understanding, management and governance of the resources we all rely on."

On the Accounting Blueprint

Cornis Van Der Lugt, Lead Author, Reporting 3.0 Accounting Blueprint, Steering Board & Operations Team Member:

“To help deliver on the promise that ‘accountants will save the world,’ we at Reporting 3.0 convened a Working Group of 30-plus global experts to envision how ‘new accounting’ will develop over the next two decades,” said. “What emerged was the Accounting Blueprint with Recommendations for the evolution of a comprehensive discipline integrating financial accounting, management accounting and sustainability accounting to transform the existing fragmented approaches to accounting into what can be called ‘Integrated Accounting.’”

Wim Bartels, Partner, Corporate Reporting, KPMG:

"Even sustainability specialists of today hardly get their heads around context-based materiality and related allocation. “In addition to further understanding of the willing, we also need similar understanding at the level of standard setters and frameworks. They have to get a holistic picture of the future of accounting collectively where their ‘own’ framework only is a part of the jigsaw. Investors should engage to better understand the relationships between non-financials and financials and put effort into sophisticating their models and approaches to investing. No longer will ‘discounted cash flows’ and ‘net present values’ count. Investors will need to integrate ‘planetary boundaries,’ ‘societal value’ and ‘intertemporal value’ – amongst others – into their thinking."

Lois Guthrie, Director, Redefining Value, World Business Council for Sustainable Development:

“Thomas Berry says, 'Whatever fictions exist in Wall Street bookkeeping, the earth is a faithful scribe; a faultless calculator, a superb bookkeeper; we will be held responsible for every bit of our economic folly… Clearly, human accounting needs to align with thermodynamic accounting, as we humans can’t afford the consequences of our current folly. Responsible solutions exist to harvest prosperity responsibly from the earth’s bounty."

Richard Martin, Head of Corporate Reporting for the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants:

“Reporting 3.0 is looking far ahead, and the 20-year focus of its Accounting Blueprint is no exception. I’m excited about the launch of the Accounting Blueprint – I want to understand better the next steps and how the 3.0 work fits with other initiatives."

Tjeerd Krumpelman, Head of Business Advisory, Reporting & Stakeholder Management, ABN AMRO:

"A company’s performance cannot be measured by its financial value alone – this is too narrow a perspective. Financial results are only one aspect of our business and are always looking backwards. Integrated accounting allows one to present the non-financial or pre-financial and forward-looking value you create in a structured, transparent manner. One of the greatest benefits of integrated thinking and reporting is that it helps us discover what truly matters to our stakeholders. It gives us more insight into the value we create – and the way that we do it.  It gives us a much better understanding of what we need to focus on in order to create more long-term value for all our stakeholders."

Paul Hurks, Manager International Accountancy Coordination, Dutch Federation of Accountants:

“The increasing quest by investors for non-financial sustainability information emphasizes that this kind of information is in fact pre-financial information. We see more and more inclusion of non-financial KPIs in decision making processes. This feature of 'inclusive accounting' has a strong predictive value for business viability in financial terms. The Reporting 3.0 Accounting Blueprint offers us the road map to make inclusive accounting mainstream.”

On the New Business Models Blueprint

Daniel Christian Wahl, Author, Designing Regenerative Cultures:

“Transformative innovation in business models, reporting and the entire why, what and how of doing business will play a critical role in the transition towards diverse regenerative cultures everywhere," said, who will be Keynoting the New Business Models Plenary Panel. I look forward to contributing and meeting the community of positive mavericks who are very passionate and committed to driving transformative change at the Reporting 3.0 Conference – feels like my kind of people!”

Katie Hill, Executive Director, B Lab UK:

“The purpose and deep commitment of the B Corp movement fits perfectly with those of the Reporting 3.0 – namely, to explore systemic issues around accounting for value with practical examples of how to build ambitious new business models, all based on principles of collaboration, rigour and transparency.”

Antony Upward, Founder, Flourishing Enterprise Innovation:

“Integral Business Model designers must apply design principles derived from the same latest trans-disciplinary systems-based scientifically credentialed knowledge, ethical and human rights frameworks that informed the design and the questions in the tool. I am contributing to the Reporting 3.0 community’s work because we share a vision: to bring about a future where all enterprises are designed with the intention to do good to do well – striving together to ‘sustain the possibility for human and other life to flourish on this planet for seven generations and beyond,’ as John Ehrenfeld of MIT says – socially beneficial, environmentally regenerative and financially viable.”

Josephine Matthews, Founder, Sustainable Value Creation:

“The truly Integral Business Models are likely to come from a small percentage of system entrepreneurs who can “see” both the collective need and a fundamentally better way to achieve it, and who can build the integral maturity into their organisation, with leaders operating at teal level leadership.”

Mark Van Clieaf, Managing Partner, Organizational Capital Partners:

“Only five percent of the world’s adults have the cognitive hard wiring and systems thinking to conceptualize, plan out, resource and implement business model and industry ecosystem transformations.”

Lisette van der Maarel, Business Development, ReBlend:

“Current business decisions are made on incomplete data and P&L statements only show a part of the reality. We aim to develop a business that is built on true value and Reporting3.0 plays a crucial role in this.”

On the Global Thresholds & Allocations Council

Allen White, Co-Founder, Global Reporting Initiative; Senior Fellow, Tellus Institute:

"Sustainability requires contextualization within thresholds; that’s what sustainability is all about. Yet to this day, contextualization rarely appears in sustainability reports. Reporting 3.0's Global Thresholds & Allocations Council seeks to close this Context Gap by validating and, where necessary, developing thresholds and allocation methodologies. By doing so, it will enable companies to implement Context in concert with an independent, trusted and authoritative expert source.”

Mark McElroy, Founding Director, Center for Sustainable Organizations:

"What inspires me most about the forthcoming Reporting 3.0 conference is the rapid progress its organizers have been able to make in the ongoing quest by many of us to operationalize Sustainability Context in reporting, and in particular their embrace of performance accounting principles taken from Context-Based Sustainability and multicapitalism.  There can be little doubt that our next best chance for putting these ideas into practice — and in the hands of business writ large — rests with the Reporting 3.0 initiative, but only with widespread support.  That is why I want to be involved!”

Romie Goedicke, Head of One Planet Thinking, IUCN Netherlands:

“We need to start bending the curve. We collectively have pushed 4 out of 9 planetary boundaries beyond safe limits of their operating space. One Planet Thinking supports companies to make their impacts and dependencies visible and assists them to create a pathway towards respecting the ecological boundaries of our planet, moving beyond competition and relative improvements. We support the work done by Reporting 3.0 as it tries to push companies to take the next step in reporting. We believe that data is key, as this drives better decisions. But also because, in particular, reporting places impacts into context and provides a pathway toward a sustainable future within our shared planetary boundaries."

James Quilligan, Senior Fellow, Economic Democracy Advocates & Peer to Peer Foundation:

"Nothing is more important now for global society than to compare the increase or decrease of regenerative wealth through an economic system with the dynamic equilibrium which its ecology can optimally 'carry' or sustain to meet the needs of its people. The Global Thresholds & Allocations Council’s vetting of guidelines for actual throughput and carrying capacity will enable businesses and governments to manage how the thresholds of resources available in an environment are best allocated to everyone living within that environment."