The Inquiry

Essays exploring one question.

For more than forty years, one question has guided my work:

Why has business sustainability produced so much activity—and yet so little transformation?

These essays are my attempt to explore that question in public.

Some revisit ideas we have long accepted.

Some examine the assumptions shaping organisational decisions.

Some look ahead to the challenges artificial intelligence presents as it begins inheriting today’s sustainability thinking.

All are part of the same inquiry.


Begin Here

If you are new to this work, these three essays provide the best introduction.

Featured Essays

What Sustainability Was Meant to Mean

Before we can improve sustainability, we need to know what we mean by it.

→ Read

Why Has Sustainability Produced So Much Activity… Yet So Little Transformation?

The opening essay of The Inquiry..

→ Read

When Artificial Intelligence Becomes Perfectly Wrong

What happens when AI inherits assumptions that have never been examined?

→ Read (publishing July 14, 2026)

Why The Inquiry Exists

For more than forty years, one question has guided my work:

Why has business sustainability produced so much activity—and yet so little transformation?

The Inquiry is where I explore that question in public.

Some essays revisit ideas we have long accepted. Others challenge assumptions that have quietly shaped business thinking for decades. Together they document an evolving body of work that asks better questions before proposing better answers.

The Inquiry is not a marketing campaign or a collection of blog posts.

It is the public continuation of a conversation that began long before these essays—and one I hope will continue well beyond them.

Latest Essays

September

🎤 Real Circularity Summit

📚 Our Common Future—Now published

📚 Perfectly Wrong published

Continue the Conversation

If these essays resonate with your own experience, there are several ways to continue the inquiry.

Read the books
Explore the complete arguments developed in Our Common Future—Now, Perfectly Wrong, and Real Circularity. Books.

Work With Ken
If your organisation is experiencing the gap between serious sustainability commitment and limited transformation, let’s begin a conversation.

Subscribe to The Inquiry
Receive each new essay as it is published and join a growing community of leaders exploring what comes next. Subscribe.