Archive for the ‘Business’ Category

Ecolism: Spiritual Entrepreneurship

Wednesday, January 14th, 2009

Innately as human beings, we desire 2 things whether consciously aware of it or not: to feel a connection to something greater than ourselves and to be able to benefit other people and the world around us. This is the essence of spirituality. If you can achieve these 2 things in life, you can cultivate true happiness and peace.

Life will always be a mystery, but can’t we agree the point is to be truly happy and free of suffering? And yet pondering this as an intellectual ideal or meditating on a mountain in Tibet for the rest of your life won’t cut it. We have to somehow feel it and incorporate it into the reality of our lives, which for good or bad largely centers around making money to provide a means to function in society. To many, money is perceived as the root of all evil and focusing on making a lot of it couldn’t possibly allow you to connect to something greater than yourself or benefit other people. It’s too competitive and you have to focus only on yourself or else you’ll be exploited by those that do.

But what if this is all wrong? What if focusing on spiritual growth, connecting to the force that powers you beyond your ego, and cultivating a sense of importance in benefiting other people, will actually give you an edge? What if the world is going through a dramatic shift from a linear system to a cyclical system, a renewable system, where a more, more, me, me mentality will lose, and a holistic, spiritual mentality will win? What will help traditional capitalism transcend into a new form of governance we like to call ecolism?

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ShopWiki for Christmas

Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008

For all you last minute Christmas shoppers, check out ShopWiki. It’s an interesting site attempting to revolutionize online shopping by crawling Google for every online store on the internet. This is cool because most online marketplaces and shopping sites have selective stores that that they set up deals with, whereas ShopWiki brings in virtually every store on the web, allowing you to better compare price data and make more informed decisions on what to buy. Furthermore, it has a near flawless user interface and interaction, which is the name of the game in retaining users and making money.

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Recycle Bank

Wednesday, December 10th, 2008

Here’s a company that’s doing something very special. I watched Ron’s presentation at VLAB (MIT/Stanford Venture Lab) Green Tech for the Consumer Market this past January and got very excited. Then after hearing Trae Vassallo’s glowing presentation at the Silicon Valley West Coast Green conference, I knew they were out to change the world.

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Women think differently

Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008

I was looking through the Clean Tech group on LinkedIn and found a cool article from Sami Shiro talking about a recent law in Norway passed that mandates 40% of all executive boards be women. He went on to discuss how this new way of thinking could help us with our sustainability dilemma. By creating a holistic goal if you will, you force/allow the companies to figure out their own way to get there. Sami gave the two examples of businesses and homes becoming carbon neutral by 2020 and 75% of water usage recycled by 2015. Non-compliance would have strict consequences such as mandating homes/businesses to buy appropriate technology to reach the target after a set period of time. In the case of the Norway boards, if they don’t reach their goal in 2 years, the company will be shut down!

I found this fascinating… is our world starting to wake up? Is the man’s way of thinking becoming outdated and even under-evolved? Very linear, physical, territorial, power obsessed… and yet now we’ve reach the edge, we’ve maxed out our world. There’s no more land to take over, nothing left to conquer, nowhere else for people to live, and no more resources to fight over other than oil (and this will be the last hoorah). Something has to change, and it starts with our thinking. I’ve been doing a lot of GT’ing about how that can happen, and the best thing I’ve come up with is a swift shift in global power from male to female.

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Our Google Feedback

Monday, November 24th, 2008

We’ve been getting great Google Feedback ads on the site for the sustainability posts recently written. Very exciting bc they’re in exact alignment with the expansion we’ve been working on at GT.

  1. Environmental Capital Partners, a private equity firm that provides long-term capital and management support to leading middle-market companies in the environmental industry.
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  3. Lumosity, brain training games to improve memory and attention. Jake turned me on to this earlier this year and we love it. Ironic that it showed up as an ad.
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  5. Ideal Bite, offers bite-sized ideas for light green living. Their Daily Tips cover everything from biodynamic wine to organic cosmetics.
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  7. Locallectual, a database and community that helps people find local products made closer to home. Shop at local stores, buy local goods, eat local foods.
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  9. Green Irene, a trained and certified eco-consultancy that offers Green Home Makeovers and eco-products for your home. They help you cut energy and utility bills and create a healthier environment for you and your family.

 

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