By Yasmin Glanville November 27, 2009
Green and innovation are the new power team in the world of business growth and leadership. Companies that think outside the box to create innovative green solutions that easily fit into people's normal personal and work lifestyles and interests, are gaining leadership - often resulting in growth.
How this marriage of green and innovation in business came about is an interesting journey. Scientific evidence of climate change and other global environmental and social changes burst into mainstream consciousness and actions a few years ago. "Green" became the new buzz word.
Popularized by diverse celebrities and pioneers - Al Gore, Dr. David Suzuki, Interface Founder Ray Anderson, energy guru Amory Lovins, and sustainability author Dr. Bob Willard, among others, everyone's participation in being more green, environmentally sustainable at work and in the home, has been adopted as a normal everyday behaviour. They challenged leaders in all walks of life to take action to sustain our environment in every way possible.
Leaders everywhere took this challenge seriously. Those with the financial means and bandwidth, such as General Electric, BP, P&G, Wal-mart, Home Depot and others, leveraged the power of innovation to create a gamut of "green" solutions. The result was a tidal wave of "green" solutions and products: green cleaning products and services, hybrid cars, green lighting, green energy and packaging, green "LEED" building practices, and green waste management.
The marriage of green and innovation has also resulted in unusual partnerships. For example, as reported in Jane and Michael Hoffman's book, 'GREEN', in 2005 BP - one of the largest energy companies - launched BP Alternative Energy, with an $8 billion commitment to building power plants that generate clean energy from natural resources such as wind and solar. To educate young people about the changes in energy choices and get them knowledgeable about and involved in their energy future, BP knew that it had to be entertaining and fun. So they partnered with SimCity computer game makers, Electronic Arts Inc (EA) to create a new iteration of SimCity Societies released late 2007. It allows game players to make choices about how their Sim(ulated) community is going to be powered and the consequences of their decisions. It is a huge success among youth and adults.
Smaller companies, start-ups, inventors and youth have also joined the ranks of green leaders and solutionists. A Yahoo search on August 25 revealed over 142 million 'Green and Innovation' hits alone. Google revealed over 35 million.
Virtual Green and innovation communities are also on the rise. Just check out social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn and Plaxo and you will new groups springing into the forefront.
Regardless of whether your company is an established brand leader, or a new business venture, if you have a keen interest in creating solutions that profitably grow your business, reduce energy costs and positively impact the environment and local communities, the creative spark that gets things moving in the right direction might come from leveraging the power of green and innovation.
And if you want to share your green innovation business success stories too, we'd love to hear from you.
The greening journey continues.
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1. Jane Hoffman and Michael Hoffman, 'GREEN: Your Place in the New Energy Revolution', Palgrave MacMillan, (2008) p.76-77.