Recent Articles
Net Impact 2008: Irrational Exuberance in Electric Vehicles
The room was packed on Friday for a panel entitled “Bringing Electric Cars to the Mass Market”. The moderator, Bill Moore, editor of EV World, set the stage with a historical perspective–did you know that Henry Ford’s wife drove an electric car?–and then launched straight into the thick of things.
Before being critical, let me just say that I really enjoyed the panel. The panelists had some excellent things to say on the topics of battery rental, lithium availability, and V2G technology. The audience was very knowledgeable and engaged and the room was filled to capacity.
Net Impact 2008: Private/Public Partnerships at Accenture
In 2003 Management Consulting firm Accenture created the Accenture Development Partnership (ADP) as a means of providing consulting services to NGOs, foundations and donor organizations working in the development sector. Since its launch, ADP has completed 200+ projects in 55 countries with more than 45 different client organizations.
I caught up with Senior Manager Chris Jurgens yesterday to better understand the program, its benefits to Accenture, as well as why it constitutes a “second generation” private-public partnership.
First Generation: pre-ADP
For Accenture the first generation of development consulting was its Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) program, inaugurated in 1999. Still in place today, the VSO program was instituted to allow Accenture’s consultants to take sabbaticals and engage in international development consulting for 6 months to 1 year.
The VSO advantage is that consultants remain Accenture employees and do not deviate from their career tracks. Consultants take a 50% pay cut, and they organize their own projects/partnerships with host NGOs.
Net Impact 2008: Interview with Ideablob’s Ami Kassar
Napoleon Wallace - As sustainable entrepreneurship has evolved, the growing need for innovative resources that can provide support to this niche entrepreneur has become increasingly evident. The result has been a wave of innovation that is providing new platforms and resources so that good ideas can be nurtured to fruition for the benefit of both entrepreneurs and stakeholders.
One such company is Ideablob.com, an online community that allows entrepreneurs to share and grow their business ideas. In addition, each month a “winning” idea is awarded $10,000 based on votes from the rest of the ideablob.com community.
I had the opportunity to speak with Ami Kassar, founder and the Chief Innovation Officer of Ideablob (his bio can be found here), to briefly discuss his thoughts on the growing need for resources that support new ideas, and Ideablob’s role in helping to fill this gap. He will be a part of the “Web 2.0 Panel” on Friday during the Net Impact North America Conference.
Net Impact 2008: Interview with Cleantech Investor Joyce Ferris
Joyce Ferris is a managing director of Blue Hill Partners (her bio can be found here). She will be a part of the panel for “Early Stage Financing for Clean Tech” on Friday during the Net Impact North America Conference.
When reading through the Blue Hill website, one thing in particular caught my eye. I’ve looked through more than 50 cleantech private equity firms’ websites but haven’t seen anyone else with this type of strategy:
We concentrate in areas within the GreenTech sector and build investment ‘clusters’. To date, Blue Hill has built a cluster around energy efficiency technologies for application in commercial and industrial buildings and facilities. (link)
I asked Joyce to elaborate on her cluster strategy:
Net Impact 2008: Interview with Cleantech Investor Tucker Twitmyer
I recently interviewed Tucker Twitmyer, a managing director of EnerTech Capital (his bio can be found here). Tucker will be a part of the panel for “Early Stage Financing for Clean Tech” on Friday during the Net Impact North America Conference.
We spoke briefly about oil prices and EnerTech’s reactions to recent drops in oil prices. Many cleantech investments require oil at recent prices ($80+) in order to be competitive, but apparently EnerTech isn’t worried.
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