I learned that first hand when Page was a panelist at a World Economic Forum session that I moderated some years back. In the midst of our workshop on the future of access and mobility, he began to wax lyrical on the subject of elevators that could move not only vertically through buildings but also horizontally through cities.

«Crazy,» I thought to myself. «Please, let’s get back to grown-up themes like urban densification, subway systems, hydrogen-fuelled buses, pedestrianization, cycle ways and the like.»

But — there’s always a but with Google — I then came across ThyssenKrupp’s plans for a cable-free elevator system powered by magnets, which moves horizontally as well as vertically. The German steel and technology group hailed the design as the “holy grail of the elevator industry,” noting in a Financial Times article that it would be testing these «Multi» lifts in a 240-meter tower in Rottweil, Germany.

Because the system potentially enables multiple lifts to use the same shaft, like the paternoster-style lifts that were a feature of the university library where I first explored the foothills of what we now call «the sustainability agenda» in the late 1960s, the impact on building design could be revolutionary.

“The limits [on high-rise building design] will be removed,” enthused Patrick Bass, ThyssenKrupp’s head of R&D. “We will have futuristic buildings that previously could only be dreamed of.”

In this spirit, a book that had a big impact on my thinking about futuristic possibilities was 2009’s«What Would Google Do?» by Jeff Jarvis. The implicit question: How do we turn the page on the current (and largely incremental) sustainability discussion, spurring it to previously unimagined levels of influence and impact?

At the time, we were in the early stages of setting up Volans, and I since have used that question with a range of clients, from corporations to the World Wildlife Fund, as an invitation to stretch their horizons and ambition. We also often speak of the need to boost not just our IQ and EQ, but also ourFuture Quotient — thinking wider, deeper, more ambitiously (remember Apple’s Think Different campaign?) and with an eye to new ways to reboot the prevailing economic system.

Potential pitfalls are associated with thinking really outside the box, like the time we were spoofed (or «Virgled«) in our 2011 Future Quotient report.

Project Virgle, a 100-year plan allegedly developed by Google and Virgin to create a human settlement on Mars, seemed to chime nicely with what we already knew about the two companies. Richard Branson had his Virgin Galactic, and Google had its $30 million Lunar X-Prize. Optimistically, it would have made sense for them to form the first privately funded team to land operational robots on the Moon. The hoax tapped into our desire to believe in a stretch version of what Google might do.

Chastened but unbowed, we continued to push upward and outward, taking part in early discussions hosted by Branson’s foundation, Virgin Unite, which resulted in the launch of The B Team. Thrilled that they had embraced the «People, Planet & Profit» formulation that I had coined in 1995, I plunged into the task of converging our Breakthrough Capitalism agenda with The B Team’s «Plan B» agenda.

The results are now out in the form of a book co-authored with Jochen Zeitz, former CEO of PUMA and now co-chair of The B Team with Branson. «The Breakthrough Challenge» explores ways in which we can migrate from today’s notions of profitability to performing against tomorrow’s bottom line.

Incentivizing change

In recent years we have seen companies vying with one another to reach the top of indices such as the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes or the Globescan/SustainAbility ranking of companies in terms of expert perceptions. But our sense is that a profound change is coming.

Yes, it’s important to track what leadership companies have been doing to push the envelope, such as Interface with its Mission Zero. But increasingly the spotlight is likely to shift from individual companies and their initiatives (think Ecomagination, Sustainable Living Program, Net Positive) to business-to-business platforms. Key examples include GreenBiz’s own VERGE, the Sustainable Apparel Coalition, the Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals coalition and Sustainia.

It’s all too easy to write off the corporate social responsibility, green or sustainability agendas, partly because too many business leaders have adopted, adapted and diluted these agendas to suit their own purposes. You may believe in homeopathy, but the idea that solutions diluted to almost undetectable levels can solve our global environmental, social and governance challenges strains my imagination to the breaking point.

Various platforms celebrate selections of glorious innovators each year, which is great. We also have to work out how to make such iconic innovators way more than the sum of their parts.

The Skoll World Forum is one platform headed in this direction, in areas such as antibiotics resistance. And I will be working with Sustainia through 2015 to build their Solutions Alliance, to leverage the work of new solutions such as the AirCarbon technology developed by Newlight Technologies featured in this year’s Sustainia 100 Solutions ceremony.

A key challenge: to create the necessary external system incentives to drive change in the right directions — and at the right pace and scale.

This theme — of the need for breakthrough change not only at the product and company levels but also in the prevailing system conditions, including science funding and tax regimes — will be threaded through future posts in this series. We will explore new ways in which emerging societal goals can be better aligned with business targets, incentives and business models. Your comments will be welcome along the way.

Meanwhile, regardless whether you think that the future will involve «spacescrapers» beating Virgin Galactic into near-space or the emergence of new generations of «Carbon Capture & Utilization» businesses, it’s time to turn the page and propel our imaginations and ambitions racing to new heights.