Starter list

Here's a great reminder list of what we (US, other countries) need to do. It's a bit bigger than (most) companies can handle, but it's good to know it's a feasible list:
Stein's list of next steps to combat global warming.

Turning "Green" Wishes into Products and Services

The whole spectrum for minimizing the impacts of global warming: research and monitoring, saving energy, developing new renewable, non-carbon energy sources, replacing existing energy systems, etc., presents so many opportunities for innovation it might not seem important to analyze the market. But for innovations to be successful, they need to make sense, and these folks are nothing but sensible!

Clayton Christensen, of the Harvard Business School, and his band of merry men and women at Innosight.com, have helped many companies understand the origins and ways to achieve disruptive innovation by formulating potential target markets not as psychographic profiles, or technological advances but in terms of a person's (or company's) "jobs to be done."

Others have been analyzing this approach, too, and one of the first, possibly preceding Christensen, is Strategyn.com, headed by Anthony W. Ulwick. In the May issue of Harvard Business Review (treading on Christensen's own turf!), he and senior consultant Lance A. Bettencourt show how to dissect a job into components that help uncover the specific opportunities for innovation. Their "job map" applies universally, although the time spent on each of the eight steps varies. The central step is the execution step, which is what most people think of as the "job:" performing surgery, for example, or washing one's hands. But before you can do the central step, you need to define or plan what you're going to do, locate or gather materials, prepare, confirm all is ready. And afterwards you need to confirm, adjust, perhaps troubleshoot, prepare for the next iteration.

As you look more closely at each of these steps, you might come up with these questions on your own, but Ulwick and Bettencourt give some suggestions:
* Can the job be executed in a more efficient or effective sequence?
* Do some customers struggle more with executing the job than others (for instance, novices versus experts, older versus younger?)
* Is it possible to eliminate the need for particular inputs or outputs from the job?

And so on. What ideas have we sparked already?

Trying to involve lots of people, and make money at the same time?

Try "Smart Startups: How Entrepreneurs and Corporations Can Profit by Starting Online Communities" by David Silver. David is an angel investor who thinks 10,000 social networks will blossom in the next two years, and wants his readers to be among the ones who start them. He'll invest, it seems, if you follow his guidelines, and you'll avoid venture capitalists and make more money.

The key is to appreciate we humans' social needs (support, validation, status, etc.), then build a business that gives people enough value that they're willing to pay in advance, thus providing float -- one of the most beautiful words in the English language (paraphrased). Your cost of goods? Zero, if you have given people a reason to contribute.

Newspapers want to be green too

Newspapers have a big green problem: to produce their main product means taking something green (a tree) and spending a lot of energy (and water, and toxic emissions) to turn it something white (paper), then spending more fuel to transport it to each city from the paper plant, then more fuel to deliver it to each household -- and then hope that it gets recycled -- albeit at a lower value point than the original white paper. Many papers have found at least partially recycled paper sources, but even that still has to be shipped in bulk and then redelivered by gas or diesel powered vehicles.

So what to do?

The Newspaper Association has a CD for sale with a roundup of tips from member newspapers: Green Ideas.

Among the ideas are ones for just lowering the energy consumption and reducing waste: thinner paper (also cheaper), managing the press runs better so that there's less immediate waste of spoiled papers off the press, switching to soybean ink (if they haven't already), and turning off lights and improving energy management in general in their buildings.

Other ideas include switching to hybrid or biodiesel delivery vehicles, cutting some long-distance deliveries out altogether (which were probably money-losers before $4 gas anyway), and offering recycling to their own customers.

Then there is replacing the print edition with an electronic edition. This hasn't gone as well, because free web sites can't seem to earn enough money to cover the nut of editorial salaries, and subscription-required sites just haven't got much traction, in the sea of free news and advertising resources. But it's a start.