“It turns out that over the past decade or so, the highest rate of entrepreneurial activity belongs to the 55-64 age group. The 20-34 age bracket, meanwhile, which we usually identify with swashbuckling and risk-taking youth (think Facebook and Google), has the lowest rate.”

Since the U.S. population is aging quickly, the number of people 55 and older is increasing dramatically. Because of increasing (healthy, productive) life expectancies and a decline in lifetime employment by large companies, the Kauffman Foundation is expecting that we’re “on the cusp of an entrepreneurship boom”. Download the fairly brief “pdf” of the report.

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NComputing is also using a technical solution to green PC use. With distributed computing, nComputing systems draw less than five watts, using 90% less energy than a typical PC, and can be run by solar power or a battery.

Sungeeta Chowdry of the Acumen Fund spoke about the Ripple Effect Project, their collaboration with IDEO (represented by Sally Madsen) to create solutions for customer-centered, sustainable and affordable delivery of water.

They brought together twenty organizations (both for-profit and nonprofit) on the ground in India and East Africa, in addition to the nonprofit Gates foundation, the private company IDEO and the Acumen social venture fund, for a complex cross-sector collaboration. IDEO led a human-centered design process, which means rapid prototyping, speaking to potential users immediately, iterating while continuing to listen, and coming up with a fairly quick solution. The resulting projects are commercial water sales operations, with some unusual aspects such as government ownership of the land and/or equipment in some places.

So why is water sales a more effective and scalable solution than donated aid? Some of the answers are compliance and aligning incentives. Madsen and Chowdry explained that people aren’t always able to make the best health decisions. Using a standard business practice of customer segmentation, IDEO put together a set of behavior profiles, so on-the-ground organizations could talk about more than health, such as by emphasizing the status of buying clean water or following  government direction.

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Shah coordinates the domestic policy agenda to help government support both social entrepreneurs and nonprofit organizations. She says the government has the ability to drive resources toward the most innovative solutions. There will be funds such as to support nonprofit organizations grow promising programs and help them spread across the country, but Shah emphasized the government’s goal to catalyze multi-sector partnerships addressing issues in education, health care and environment.

An example she gave was that Cisco is participating in workforce retraining initiatives, helping to develop a community college curriculum in health IT.

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Cause Marketing Generally Works for Marketers

I’ve been a fan of cause-related marketing programs (although I typically work with smaller entrepreneurial businesses and not the Project Red and Pink Ribbon campaigns in the market). It’s clear why those of us with a marketing perspective would find a lot to love. As MC Milker wrote in our Network, consumers are interested in products tied to a cause. Since consumers respond, corporations are getting involved. Eikenberry cites IEG Inc, reporting, “Cause marketing expenditures went from almost zero in 1983 to and estimated $1.3billion in 2006″.

But for a moment, let’s think about the perspective of nonprofit organizations and fundraisers (and maybe even philosophers). Eikenberry says cause marketing “devalues the moral code of philanthropy by making virtuous action easy and thoughtless”.

Can Philanthropy Leading to Social Change?

Eikenberry is skeptical of that consumers can right the world’s wrongs. When they are buying and fulfilling their material needs and desires, “they generally have little impetus to consider…’the public good’”. She sites two studies that show that when consumers have bought a cause-branded product they are less likely to make charitable contributions and feel they have “already done their philanthropic share”. So does cause-marketing decrease or increase the amount of money going to charity? ‘hard to know, but it is definitely shifting where the money goes.

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Tuesday, Tina Seelig spoke at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco about her new book “What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20“, and her words can be a great reminder of how fun (and important) being an entrepreneur is, if your motivation or energy ever diminishes.

Seelig’s first point is that problems are opportunities; bigger problems are bigger opportunities. Playing a video clip of Vinod Khosla saying something to the effect of, “No one is going to pay you to solve a small problem.” So, if you’re overwhelmed, it could be a good sign. You may have taken on a very worthwhile opportunity.

You can see other videos of speakers at the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, which Seelig heads at ecorner.Stanford.edu. A free Stanford education!

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On the last day of the show (yesterday), Jeff Spies, Director of Training & Tradeshows of AEE Solar gave a half-day workshop called “Launch and Grow Your Solar Business”. Free to attendees of the Intersolar exhibits, the workshop covered everything from the qualifications needed to become a solar dealer to common configurations of residential and small commercial solar power installations to business strategies. And, if you would have signed up before early June, registration to the exhibit portion of the show would have been free (and after that point it was $100).

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As far as I can tell, there won’t be any major news coming out of the conference and show. Intersolar’s growth and popularity shows that this is still a young industry and more and more people want to learn about the technology and products available–as well as participate in discussions about how to grow the industry and influence public policy. Organizers say that there are 17,700 registered attendees from 79 countries and 333 exhibitors from 23 countries.

The primary “news” is a continuation of increases in PV efficiency and the lowering of costs of production for equivalent units of electricity. It’s good news but not new news.

Keynote Address by Mayor Gavin Newsom

In this blog network, you’ve probably read posts furthering the friendly rivalry between the cities of San Francisco and Portland (and now Seattle). San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and mayors of these other progressive cities blog about their communities’ challenge to each other to be more green and to claim leadership in electric car usage, solar installations and more.

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Seasoned marketing consultant Alf Nucifora gave some very practical advice, which I have pared down to focus on tips that are ideal for green businesses:

> One recommendation is to highlight your products or services that can be considered “luxury within reach“. Organic cotton towels, lotions with essential oils, beautiful bamboo bowls all come to mind, but services fit this bill as well–maybe prepared meals from locally sourced ingredients.

> Family friendly entertainment is big right now. People are staying home or are looking for “staycation” ideas.

> You might also focus on teens, who tend to have a high level of discretionary income (and from a project I worked on, I know that they influence almost all spending within a household).

> Position your product or service as a gift-giving option. Wealthy people aren’t as comfortable these days with conspicuous consumption, but it is still good to be generous to others.

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The authors, Robert Brunner (once a product designer for Apple and now a principal in the design firm Pentagram) and Stewart Emery (author of “Success Built to Last” and a leader in the Human Potential Movement) did not just rely on their own experience, but also relate numerous case studies about what other companies have done right in developing design-driven (and customer needs focused) organizations.

As you can see on the authors’ site, they are not just talking about package design and logos. The briefest synopsis of the book is, “We’re talking about design as a total concept—not just about how a product looks, but how the product operates, how it sounds, and how it feels. Also included in this idea of design is the quality of your purchase experience, of what happens when you actually open up the box, how you start to feel, and what all this communicates to you. And of course, there is the chain of events through which you became aware of the product. This is part of the design connection too—what all those touch points mean to you as a customer.”

One point I particularly liked is, “If you have your own brand-driven approach to design, others can’t really take this from you. People can try to copy it, but they they become merely derivative. If you do a good job at it, you have something that becomes a very strong and defensible strategy… when a customer purchases your product or pays for your service, they feel they have joined something.”

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First of all 60% of Americans use social media, and the figure is higher for your market, if you sell to younger Americans.

Cone surveyed almost 1100 adults and found that (of that 60%) 85% feel that companies should interact with their customers via social media.

I found it interesting that the men surveyed were twice as likely as women to use social media to interact frequently with companies (33% versus 17%).

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Government Help?

If you are a small business or want to sell energy efficiency products to a small business, you might think that a logical place to start is the US Small Business Association. However, I don’t think that the SBA has any special loan guaranty programs for renewable energy or energy efficiency purchases. Please comment below if you have had experience with any of the above financing programs or if you know of others!

Recently, the SBA did announce grants to specific small business development centers for energy efficiency programs. Although I don’t see any reference to financing, if you can qualify for a general SBA loan, energy efficiency improvements could be a good use of proceeds!

Another Federal government agency, the EPA, has a list of resources as part of its Energy Star for Small Business program. When I clicked on “California” I received this list, which includes some lenders.

If your business wants to sell energy efficiency products or services to homeowners, then you’ll be happy to see an increasing number of related loan products for homeowners. For a number of years there has been an Energy Efficient Mortgage program, but I’ve heard that is hasn’t been very popular with banks and homeowners. And now, In the northeast, there is a pilot program for a promising-sounding Energy Star Mortgage, which allows homeowners to finance energy efficiency retrofits with a tax-deductible interest payments.

Private Sector Financing Sources

Private banks are starting to innovate with “green loans”. One that was launched late last year is by Umpqua Bank and the Energy Trust for Oregon is the Greenstreet lending program is for installing solar energy systems or energy efficiency improvements. Businesses who are customers of Portland General Electric, Pacific Power, NW Natural or Cascade Natural Gas can apply for loans of $5,000 to $100,000 with a fixed 6.5% interest rate. There is also a program for homeowners.

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KPMG’s International Survey of Corporate Responsibility Reporting came out over a month ago, but at 118 pages, it has taken me a while to go through it. If you’d like to check it out, download the report from the KPMG site.

But if you’d like a quick summary, here are some highlights that stood out to me:

First, some good news: The report says, “Corporate responsibility reporting has gone mainstream - nearly 80 percent of the largest 250 companies worldwide… issued reports.” However, the continuation of that sentence says, “…and an additional four percent integrated corporate responsibility information into their annual reports.”

I’d love to hear from an annual report writer or investor relations executive, because four percent sounds very low. Maybe there is a good reason for a stand-alone report, but it seems to me that sustainability and social responsibility should be integral to corporate operations in the Twenty-first Century.

(I get ahead of myself. The punchline of the KPMG report is that companies are not integrating sustainability and social responsibility plans sufficiently. Many companies may report their plans, but very few declare their strategies and results.)

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On September 30, 2008, City Solar Tour stopped in San Francisco, and Mayor Gavin Newsom used the opportunity to announce a program to subsidize conversion to solar power for commercial users in San Francisco.

Although commercial users throughout the City can apply, the City of San Francisco is reaching out to commercial users whose location makes solar power particularly financially viable. They used the sfsolarmap.org to identify 1600 companies in downtown San Francisco where it is sunny much of the year and sent letters letting them know about the availability of up to ten thousand dollars for solar subsidies and the availability of a free audit to evaluate the viability of solar power for their commercial building.

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You can see and hear the presentations for yourself via an archived video. (Hint: You will need the RealPlayer. Click on “Part 1″ on that page under the title for the December 9th Green Buildings event, and you’ll want to fast-forward through the video of people filing into the room.)

The first keynote address was given by Gil Sperling, from the Federal Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy in the U.S. Department of Energy, who announced the signing of a memo of understanding with the California PUC to align programs in support of energy efficiency programs.

The second keynote address was given by Dian Gruenich, Commissioner, California Public Utility Commission (CPUC), who described a year-long process that resulted in a strategy plan, which you can download here (all 110 pages of it) or read an executive summary or fact sheet.  The plan’s goals include requiring all new residential construction in California to be zero net energy efficient by 2020 and for all new commercial construction to be zero net energy efficient by 2030. Read that, opportunities for green building materials, smart meters and efficient cooling systems, better windows and insulation, etc.

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These small commercial energy users were part of a Demand Response program run by the nonprofit San Francisco Community Power. When state energy use is particularly high, such as when there has been an extended heat spell and air conditioners are running for many hours a day through broad areas of the state, the California Public Utilities Commission (PUC) calls on Demand Response program participants to reduce demand by turning off equipment and lights, not using elevators, etc.

Participants in this program included all types of small commercial users, from retailer stores (such as an REI store), to automobile dealers and a film production studio, to schools and government offices. They received checks ranging from $30 to $3000 all from one day of reduced electricity usage last August.

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Willem Maas started GreenHomeGuide.com back in 2004 and sold it this summer to the U.S. Green Building Council, developers of the LEED rating system.  I asked Willem to share his experience with Ecopreneurist readers, and the following is my interview with him.

Leah: How did you think about your ultimate exit when you were starting GreenHomeGuide? Did you think about how you would maximize your investment either by sale of the company, long-term operations, etc.?

Willem: I didn’t at all.  I took GreenHomeGuide on as a cause. There was a need out there. I had talked with a lot of people who wanted to remodel green but ran into hard questions, such as which paints are safe, how to find a green contractor, etc.  I didn’t spend a lot of time focused on how it would be a sustainable business.

I figured I’d give it a shot, get a Beta of the site up and running, and learn along the way.  I had just spent nearly a decade in enterprise software, so the home improvement market, web publishing, consumer marketing, etc were all new to me.  I tried but couldn’t forecast a P&L for the business because I didn’t know what the right basis for the forecast would be, so I just plunged ahead.  Today, with a 16-month old son and a daughter on the way, I take financial projections much more seriously.

Regarding an exit, I wouldn’t advise planning for an exit as you start a business.  Focus on creating a valuable business that you enjoy running.  If and when you’ve created sufficient value that someone wants to buy it, great.  Selling a business is non-trivial.  Randy Komisar, he’s a partner at Kleiner Perkins ironically, wrote a great book that touches on this called “The Monk and the Riddle.”

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It is a chance to test your business analysis skills. Which company do you think can generate the
greatest return on that $100,000 investment?  At Forbes.com, you can read the finalists’ condensed business plans and watch videos of the entrepreneurs’ presentations to expert judges–a great source of learning to boost your green business.

Vote for one by November 30th.

The podcast is part of Stanford Social Innovation Review’s “Design for Change” series, and I recommend that you listen to it.

But if even that shortcut is too much for you, I’ll give you a couple of highlights.

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Perhaps it is an opportunity to get some publicity for your business.

Regardless of whether you are able to get any free PR, by participating, you will also be contributing to a discussion about issues that may be critical to your green business’ success.

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Ecopreneurist recently received a question from a reader about whether manufacturing an eco-friendly product in China is a good idea.  We thought his question would make a good topic for discussion and encourage other Ecopreneurist readers to give Chris your advice too by commenting below.

Chris wrote, “I have designed some great eco-friendly items [...that...] are not eco- or green-washed, but [are] designed from the start to be green and are made with fully sustainable and recycled materials… The problem I am having is, the only place I can find a supplier to make these green products is in China. I am afraid that there could be criticism, backlash or negative comments made about the brand because the products are not made in a more eco-friendly perceived Country. I have made a huge effort to have the items made elsewhere without any luck… Do I make the items in China if that is my only option and risk criticism?”

Chris, you are right to see this as an important branding question.

I assume that you have checked into the potential manufacturer and have confidence in that factory’s environmental record and labor practices. If you know that it is possible to manufacture a product in China in a sustainable way, then it is just a matter of either transportation or image. And, for products sold on the West Coast of the US, shipping from China can have less impact on the environment than other transportation means, such as trucking or air freight.

So, let’s assume that your product will be truly green in all ways (materials, manufacturing and shipping) and that your issue is only a matter of impression. What can you do?

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