Archives for category: Environment
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Solar power – no thanks

By Pete Burden
May 30, 2008 //
0

I’ve asked the question before. Just what are these business opportunities? And do we need an innovation strategy to define them?

Not always – sometimes you can just look. And sometimes a little idle speculation helps. I like the idle bit especially.

It’s been raining a lot in the last few days. I have been looking out of my office window at the rain. I looked and looked. And looked again. The view from my office Window

Where does all that rain go I wondered?

The answer is a whole slew of new rainwater harvesting businesses – such as www.clearwell-rainpiper.co.uk. Offering rainwater collection services for businesses and consumers alike. As their blurb says, not only does collecting rainwater save a lot of money for a bigger business that is greening itself. But it also saves energy and can prevent flooding.

What could be more appropriate. In a rainy country like ours.

Categories Environment, Innovation, Opportunity

Smug

By Pete Burden
May 23, 2008 //
0

I am feeling just a tiny, tiny bit smug today. As I watch oil and energy prices soar. And I revel in my new lawnmower.

The old flymo blew up a few weeks ago. We have a small lawn. I thought “Who needs electricity?”. “Who needs petrol?”. So I sought out a push mower.

Brill, I discovered, is the Rolls Royce of push lawn mowers.

Mine is simple and elegant. It’s well engineered and very well made. It packs up small. Cuts like a dream. Will last for ever (or so they say).

It uses no fuel. And it’s good exercise. Lord knows I need it.

I sincerely hope Brill practices low energy manufacturing. I wonder where they get the steel?

It’s made in Germany. So I guess it cost something in fuel and carbon terms to get it here. That troubles me.

Now there’s an opportunity. 25 million UK households. I wonder how many have a lawn?

Categories Environment, Opportunity, Solution

Champion of small business?

By Pete Burden
April 17, 2008 //
0

Just listened to an interesting interview with David Wei, CEO of Alibaba.com on the great www.smallbizpod.co.uk.

After a slightly slow start it was interesting to hear of his conversion from a believer in the power of large corporations (while an employee of B&Q, I think it was) to his belief in the power of small business. He gave the example of B&Q’s minimum size order policy meaning it missed out on some of the opportunities created by the Alibaba global SME market-place.

He was also asked about the issue of pollution (including carbon emissions, I assume) in China and immediately identified an opportunity to use Alibaba.com to improve the efficiency of freight transportation in China.

Speaking about founder Jack Ma’s statement about having no technology, no money, and no plan, David interpreted these as three virtues: having to match technology to customer needs, keeping entrepreneurial, and staying flexible.

Alex Bellinger, the presenter, explained that Alibaba.com IPO’d last year raising around $1.5 billion and shortly afterwards was valued at around $26bn (yes billion). So, I am not really sure it counts as a small business. And it’s exceptional in many ways, but for me it highlights the possibilities and opportunities of the new global, internet-enabled economic landscape. This is also the landscape in which sustainability opportunities lie.

And it’ll be interesting to see how they use their money and newly found confidence. Alibaba_local?

Categories Entrepreneurship, Environment, TNCs

To grow or not to grow?

By Pete Burden
April 10, 2008 //
2

One of the debates that seems to be threatening to ignite is the one about economic growth and how it fits with sustainability.

Is it possible to have an economy that grows, and be sustainable at the same time? Some say yes, some say no, some say maybe.

The issue to me seems to be partly one of definition. Wikipedia defines GDP as “the total market value of all final goods and services produced”. The article also suggests that GDP represents a measure of “the sum of value added at every stage of production (the intermediate stages) of all final goods and services produced within a country in a given period of time”.

There’s a well-known saying in business: “Turnover is vanity, profit is sanity”.

What I take this to mean is that any fool (more or less) can increase turnover, by for example, selling more products and services. The path to sanity is to focus not on turnover but on profit – because profit is a better measure of the value that an individual or an organisation adds to other people. It’s a measure of what we give, and, crucially, how well we do it.

If we accurately meet really important needs, and we do it really efficiently, the more profit we’ll earn.

I am not an economist, and so am probably making a idiot of myself here. But from my reading, GDP seems to be measuring something analogous to a country’s turnover, not profit.

Plants and animals (and people) grow – so I can’t see anything inherently wrong with growth. Small businesses seem to understand that growth and development isn’t just about size and scale. Profit seems to me to be an excellent way of measuring what we give to other people, and measuring our progress at getting better at that.

By the way, Wikipedia also lists 14 or 15 separate criticisms of GDP. It lists five alternatives to GDP and I heard about another one the other day: Gross Peaceful Product.

Perhaps as the sustainability/economic growth debate develops, we’ll agree some more useful measures of growth?

Categories Environment, Growth, Sustainability

Solutions not problems

By Pete Burden
April 3, 2008 //
1

There are some excellent summaries of what the sustainability challenge is all about. Personally I am more interested in solutions than the problems.

But just to set the context, I guess if you have read this far, you’ll agree that actually it’s not that surprising that as the world population has grown from around 2 billion people to around 6 billion in the course of just my lifetime (I am 50 years old) that the world is creaking a little under the strain.

That’s a huge understatement of course. There’s a long list of problems we face: climate change, poverty, nuclear annihilation, terrorism, resource insecurity, and so on.

To me sustainability is the solution to all these – “to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (that’s the Bruntland Commission’s definition).

And it’s solutions I am much more interested in than discussing the problems. And specifically what small and medium-sized businesses can do.

Categories Environment, Future, Opportunity, Solution
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