How Companies Use Blogs

I stumbled across this post on Viridus News today that lists 10 corporate blogs worth reading and it briefly talks about how each of the companies uses the medium. Now I confess I have not read the entirety of each blog but I ran a quick experiment that I would like to share here.

I did a quick Google site search for each blog on the frequency of which the word "profit" or the word "sustainability" showed up. Below is a chart of the results.



It seems there are basically three groups. The first (BofA, LinkedIN, Ebay and GM) ignore sustainability. The second group is Google, Amazon, Whole Foods and Cisco that take a balanced approach. And then the last group (McDonald's and Wal-Mart) that focus the vast majority of their discussion on sustainability (and pretty much ignore profits). By the way I tried the same test with "environment" vs "profit" and got the same results.

I would argue that the perceived leaders in sustainability are the 2nd group (the balanced folks). And in some ways Wal-Mart and McDonald's may be overcompensating.

What do you think? Does this jive with your experience?

Energy Innovation Institutes

The Brookings Institute recently put on an event where they looked at energy and innovation in the US.  One of the panel experts was Dr. James Duderstadt, President (emeritus) of the University of Michigan.

Full disclosure: Dr. Duderstadt was President at U of M while I was a student there.  He was a huge champion of our work on the solar car team and, in fact, he was one of the folks who wrote me a recommendation to get into Harvard Business School.

Dr. Duderstadt makes a clear and compelling case the the money is available within existing budgets to radically change the energy mix in the US (via intense R&D) however the real question is whether there is the political will to allocate funds.

Watch this video to see the full case:

Viridus Adds Green Business News Aggregator

Over the past couple of years, each of us has collected our favorite sources of green business news. In my case, it's mostly RSS feeds, but I also get about a dozen daily emails from newsletters, Google Alerts and friends. Keeping all the news organized and being able to categorize and go back and search has been a pain.

So to solve our own problem (and thinking others might have the same one) we created a green business news aggregator, Viridus News. Viridus News is a service that aggregates news stories at the intersection of business and sustainability (we strip out most non-business green news just the same as business news that isn't related to sustainability). The goal is to simplify busy daily lives by collecting all of the day’s most relevant, and most interesting green business news and articles on a single page.

Any user can submit a story and users collectively rate the value and popularity (and of course users can comment as well). One of the cool features of Viridus News is that we aggregate stories from a variety of sources (over 100 so far) filtered for stories that focus on green business, so you're certain not to miss important stories. No more do you have to hunt around looking for stories or tracking RSS feeds full of irrelevant news.



Another valuable features is the introduction of "categories." In this case, we aimed to create categories that roughly track job descriptions or responsibilities. The feature I personally value the most is the ability to search the news stories.

There is also a bookmarklet that easily drops in your browser links bar which allows users to easily submit stories to Viridus News.

You can learn more about Viridus News here or just go check it out and let us know what you think.

Why I am a Pessoptimist

Somehow there has come to be the notion that one's outlook on the world is a permanent fixture, unchangeable. In reality, everyone's (or at least most of our's) outlook is influenced by the conditions around us. And for me, generally speaking, I'm an optimist. I can usually find the white lining in the worst of situations. But I have to confess that I am a short term pessimist on the economy and even the clean tech / corporate sustainability industry, while still remaining a long term optimist.

The global credit crisis is having severe impact on clean tech, for example, in the last month:

1. OptiSolar lays off 190 (or half) of its employees.
2. Day4 Energy lays off 95 (or one-third) of its employees.
3. GreenFuel lays off 20 (or half) of its staff.

The list goes on and there is no reason to think this trend will right itself in a matter of months, perhaps even 3-4 years as Bill Gates has predicted. A lot of people will find themselves in tough situations.

So why am I still a long term optimist? Many folks are comparing this current economic crisis to the Great Depression, but I point out that we even recovered from that one! People are resilient and don't give up dreams and hope easily. And more specific to clean tech / sustainability, I believe this is a 30+ year trend. When I started working in this industry in 1990, it was clear even then that it would be a growth industry.

Today, we can expect fully $100 billion of the stimulus package to be targeting green industries and projects. Don't get me wrong, a lot of that money will be wasted (but it's one of the better areas to waste money if you insist on doing so). Sustainability has become a part of our vocabulary in business as well as with consumers. And as recently as a few months ago, the US Conference of Mayors forecast 4.2 million green collar jobs will be created over the next 30 years (10% of the total during that period). The reasons for growth are compelling because the industry is at the nexus of economic, defense and environmental challenges the solutions to which will truly create lasting value.