Green Options

This post was originally posted on Eco-Libris blog on November 18.

I love to read good books about green business and when it’s a book written by one of the people whom I consider to be one of my “green biz” teachers, it is a real delight!

Our book today on Monday’s green books series is:

Strategies for the Green Economy: Opportunities and Challenges in the New World of Business by Joel Makower and Cara Pike

In the last couple of years I have read Joel Makower’s blog Two Steps Forward on regular basis and it became one of my best resources to learn and better understand the green economy. I see in Joel one of the best teachers I had (and still have) in the complex world of green economy and therefore I was very excited to hear about his new book. And I wasn’t wrong.he green market from the consumer perspective and tries to make some logic in all the information we’re constantly fed with about the green consumers - from the surveys we hear about all the time about the green preferences of consumers to the many definitions of green market (LOHAS, greenback greens, cultural creatives, etc.).‘Strategies for the Green Economy’ doesn’t have all the answers and leaves you with some questions that only time might gives you the answers on, like “how green is good enough”?, but it gives you plenty of information and tools (including the Ecological Roadmap of Cara Pike that is brought at the end of the book and includes valuable data on people’s environmental values) to figure out what green business is all about.

In an entrepreneur’s world, staying current means staying ahead of the competition. Yet with all of the urgent tasks piling up on your to-do list, keeping tabs on the latest industry news and views can easily fall by the wayside. Don’t lose that competitive edge — listen to it.

My personal introduction to the growing menu of green business podcasts came while searching for strategies to make my commute time and gym visits more productive. Ranging from four minutes to forty-five minutes in length, these concise audio feeds speak directly to ecopreneurs through a mix of interviews, international news, trend analysis and expert commentary on the emerging green economy.

I’ve pre-screened the front runners and highly recommend these five favorites:

• The Global X Series on SocialEdge
• Ethical Corporation
• GreenBiz Radio
• Social Innovation Conversations at Stanford University’s Center for Social Innovation
• IdeaCast from the Harvard Business Review

(descriptions after the jump)