This weekend, the Bright Green Talent team had the pleasure of attending a panel at RMI2009 that consisted of the following environmental heavyweights: Amory Lovins: Chairman and Chief Scientist, Rocky Mountain Institute; Ray Anderson: Founder and Chairman, Interface; Carl Bass: President and CEO, Autodesk; Janine Benyus: Author, Founder of Biomimicry Guild; and  Paul Hawken: Author of Natural Capitalism.

Though all the panelists had incredibly interesting insight to share, Ray Anderson stood out to me with his perspective on how integrating sustainability can improve a business, such as he has seen with Interface.

Here’s a cliff notes version of what he talked about:

• The “inevitability of the environmental movement”: “Once you get it, you get it.” He pointed out that he’d never met an ex-environmentalist; that is to say, environmentalism is a lens through which you come to see and understand the world, and once you get there, you can’t go back to ignoring environmental externalities and separating growth from resource limitations.
• The business case for integrating sustainability: For Interface, Anderson said: costs are down, products are better, the people are galvanized, and they’ve received good will from the marketplace. I thought the third point was especially interesting - he talked about how he’s been able to motivate Interface’s employees behind the product and the company, and how each is now an evangelist for the company.
• Biggest dishonesty in the market: lack of carbon pricing and acknowledging externalities.
• The state of the green business movement: “still in the stage of early movers and fast followers.” The key will be continuing to push growth and competition so that the whole industry and marketplace is integrating sustainability.
• Wise words for businesses: “Play to win, rather than not to lose.” He’s been focusing on sensitizing stakeholders, employees, and everyone else to environmental issues to establish Interface as an industry leader.
• Wise words for individuals: “Brighten the corner where you are, and then make that corner as big as possible.”

Of course, we don’t want to discount the advice and perspective of the other illustrious panelists.

• Janine Benyus, the biomimicry thought leader, brought up the shift in the environmental movement that she had perceived from scientists learning about nature to learning from nature. She believes there’s been a democratization of innovation - that small, innovative companies are going to break through and help lead the change.
• Paul Hawken talked about mobilizing the younger generations, his recent commencement speech (worth a read!), and his view on the inaccuracies of macroeconomics (memorable remark to an econ student’s question: “don’t worry about the macroeconomists; one coffin at a time”).
• Carl Bass of Autodesk talked about integrating sustainability into Autodesk’s programs in order to make sustainability accessible and scalable for designers around the world, and his belief in disruptive innovation.
• Amory Lovins spoke about his work with RMI (and how he’d worked alongside a lot of the other companies represented on the panel), as well as the importance of emphasizing hope over despair: “hope requires fearlessness.”

Some other coverage of the event:

• GreenBiz: Reinventing Fire
• Watch the RMI2009 site for videos and other materials from the event.
• Ray Anderson’s new book: Confessions of a Radical Industrialist

There’s been a lot of buzz about the sustainable transport industry - rounds of funding and stimulus promise bring hope that the industry will grow out and create jobs where they’ve been lost in Detroit. Just recently, General Motors announced that the Chevy Volt would get 230 mpg - a claim that has provoked a fair amount of conversation.

We found this great article about 30 Electric Vehicle Companies  Ready to Take Over the Road by Chris Morrison on GreenBeat. A few below… click the link to see all 30.

30 electric cars companies ready to take over the road

January 10, 2008 | Chris Morrison

It’s official: Green car madness has taken over. After seeing more electric and hybrid vehicle startups than we could keep track of, we finally decided to start keeping count.

We’ve compiled a list, below, of 27 (update: the list has reached 30; thanks for the comments) startups, listed according to their release date, with additional information on fuel type, range, top speed and price. Most haven’t yet taken venture funding, but where applicable, we’ve listed financial backing.

While we’ve got some overall favorites (Miles, Tesla, Think) and a few favorite oddballs (Aptera, Commuter Cars, Eliica), we’ve for the most part withheld judgement. Still, if you have any of your own predictions about which companies will succeed or — far more likely — fail, we’d encourage you to make them known in the comments.

A note on our method: While most manufacturers are planning more than one model, we chose the one that seemed either most commercially viable or closest to release, depending on our own (discretionary) formula. We didn’t included well-known consumer models like the Toyota Prius or Chevy Volt, or startups like AC Propulsion that only do battery conversions for consumer vehicles. We also rounded the price to the nearest thousand.

All details are taken from the companies, so we haven’t independently confirmed things like range and top speed details. In case we missed any, mention them below and we’ll add them to the list.

American Electric Vehicle — Kurrent
Update: Defunct, according to a comment below, although they seem to still be for sale. We’re looking into it.
AEV advises its potential drivers to “Slow down,” which seems like wise advice, given the golf cart-inspired design. Still, it’s ridiculously cheap.
Fuel type: All-electric
Price: $10K
Range / top speed: 40 miles / 25mph
Release date: Available now

Commuter Cars — Tango T600
The Tango is even odder than three-wheeled designs, in some ways: It’s less than half the width of a normal car, and two can fit in a single lane. It also accelerates like a bat out of hell. Future versions are planned to be much cheaper, and have longer ranges.
Fuel type: All-electric
Price: $108K
Range / top speed: 80 miles / 150mph
Funding: Less than $1 million in angel backing; open to venture funding.
Release date: Available now

Read more.

Penned by Tom

In his fantastic interview with Doostang, Nick mentioned that one day, long beyond his time at Bright Green Talent (we hope), he’d like to be the San Francisco City and Parks Commissioner. As I strolled around Golden Gate Park this sunny weekend, I mused on this. Typical to Nick, it’s a thoughtful, somewhat eccentric ambition. The Monty Python Song, ‘I’m a lumberjack’ rolled around in my head. Nick possesses a commanding eloquence, huge intelligence and a incredible way with business. As such, my initial reaction was typical of the modern age - that he should aim higher… for mayor, governor or beyond. Yet the more I sat with it, the more this ambition made sense.

As I meandered through the park, I came across the Botanical Gardens. They reminded me of one of my favourite places on earth - the Botanical Gardens in Edinburgh - in both layout and style. Sure enough, when I looked up the park’s history, the Garden’s developer John McLaren, received his training in Edinburgh’s eden. His biography brought home to me the depth and meaning behind Nick’s ambition. John was ‘the best loved man in San Francisco’, according to one source. He lived in house in the park and spent time amongst nature every day. He earned enough prestige and admiration to become one of the ‘greatest Scots of all time’. He has left a beautiful, indelible mark on the city for thousands and thousands of people to enjoy for years, long beyond his death. He achieved his dream, to plant a redwood grove. Like Lord Iveagh, who donated Kenwood House to the people of London (where I spent many happy days as a child), his legacy leaves the inhabitants of this city with indelible memories of time spent within his park. Surely there can be no greater ambition than that? It might not seem the most glamourous job in the world, but could it be one of the most rewarding?

John McLaren is said to have planted over 2 million trees in his lifetime. Hopefully Bright Green Talent will also achieve that one day, as we plant a tree for each and every candidate we place . My favourite part of his biography is the advice his father gave him: “Me boy, if ye have nothing to do, go plant a tree and it’ll grow while ye sleep.” Surely a job which leaves a growing legacy that benefits many thousands of people long after you’re gone is something we should all aim for.

My own ambition is to become the CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It’s perhaps a more obvious choice which, until Nick’s captured my attention, has long been my ‘best job in the world’. Perhaps I take a leaf out of Nick’s park and aim for something humbler, yet equally meaningful.

Paul made the media rounds during Earth Week as everyone was wondering where green jobs are and whether they’ll live up to all the hype. Paul speaks here with San Diego News Network; he also spoke on Saturday at the San Diego Green Careers Conference.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=putdR4jFXmI&hl=en&fs=1]

penned by Matt

Here at Bright Green Talent, we talk a lot about social media. We try to figure out how to use the tools at our disposal to best reach our audience. At a social media webinar last week focusing mostly on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook, the moderator asserted that the more connections that you have through these outlets, the closer you get to reaching your target audience (based on 6 degrees of separation) – whoever that may be (a potential customer, employer, etc.).

But can social media be green?

This question struck me while working on a Pottery Barn photo shoot this week (I work occasionally for them while I career transition – see last week’s post on how to transition into a green career) producing their print catalog (the ones you may get in the mail every season).

Although I have been working with this client on and off for a few years, things had dramatically changed this time; a morning debriefing session revealed that 80% of their product sales (sofas, tables, bedding, etc.) were purchased online. During this morning meeting, a flurry of keywords and web 2.0 concepts (pre-coffee, mind you!) was dropped on us: Blogs, Tweets, Search Engine Optimization, YouTube, Owning a Category for Search-ability on Sofas, etc.

Now since this is exactly what I have been working on with Bright Green Talent, I got excited, but my enthusiasm didn’t stop there…

You have to realize that Pottery Barn is quite a conservative organization and has been resistant to change for many years — it’s a subsidiary of Williams-Sonoma Inc. and very large, with over 200 stores nationwide and millions of $ in annual revenue. It didn’t always used to be sales ratio of 80-20 (internet-catalog) — in fact it used to be the exact opposite. The mail order catalog has been integral to Pottery Barn’s past success, filled with enticing images of fine living that are very effective at selling LOTS of product. Now, although times are tough in retail, Pottery Barn is still a robust company with a surprisingly nimble quality – they may be late adopters to such things as digital photography and e-commerce, but once they move, they move fast.

And fast they are moving to (what I can see will be) the elimination of the paper catalog completely, replacing it with e-commerce and interactive web tools. We are seeing this trend with all forms of printed word, including newspapers and magazines. All of these businesses are trying to reinvent themselves – to become more transparent, more authentic, and more engaged with their audience. Not only is this a better option for all the trees of the world (Pottery Barn puts out tens of millions of catalogs a year), it also opens up a HUGE opportunity for a generation of facebook-savvy social media web nerds.

I can only imagine that there is a team of web gurus, leading the “new” Pottery Barn through the darkness that is social media and e-commerce. You may think that this is a waste of time or not really sure how to use it, but the numbers do not lie…Facebook  reaches 79 million/month, LinkedIn has 30 million professionals, Twitter reaches 6.1 million/month, YouTube – 80 million/month (Quantcast).

If you can learn how to leverage this opportunity and become a social media expert web guru, you WILL be an asset to any organization. At the very least, you can put these skills in your tool belt.

It has helped me
And used creatively you may also be able to call it a green job.

Ruminated on by Nick

The NY Times today ran a story that documents one of the larger shifts in Chinese economic policy in recent memory: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/world/asia/13china.html

Bringing this number of peasant farmers into the land banking system strikes me as a profound, forward-thinking move. Knowing little about Chinese policies, it does strike me that folks should have some ability to have direct ownership of essential assets–mostly free from government interest–but that the government should have some oversight. Though not a full, free-market reform like we enjoy in the States, I think this may be a positive first step in the process of decoupling economic from political freedoms that was first initiated in Tianeman Square.

Penned by Nick

I stumbled across a 2004 talk at Stanford by Guy Kawasaki, contrarian entrepreneur writ large, who espoused his views on the importance of making meaning first, and then trusting money will follow, as opposed to working in the opposite direction.

What struck me about Guy’s advice was how quickly this lesson has been forgotten as Web 2.0 has exploded. Indeed, my sense is that many are now beginning to wonder, what’s the real value of Facebook or Myspace, besides advertising revenue, when the communit of friends is seemingly so shallow and far removed from everyday life?

The thought that gives me heart right now is the reality that social and environmental entrepreneurs are actually embracing Guy’s lesson, and in the process, creating value that extends beyond an IPO. With some calling for war crimes trials of all CEO’s (a bit extreme, admittedly), there is, especially now in the US, a pressing need to make meaning out of an increasingly confused corporate system, and in the process, begin to be the change we all want to see in the world.