7gen Bloc

I hate leaving home on Sunday afternoons. The weekend is short enough as it is. With spring in Vermont in full bloom, and my daughter home from college, I was sad to be taking off. My week began with a Monday morning speech at the Front End of Innovation conference, which was held in Boston's World Trade Center. I spoke about "What Does Green Business Really Mean?" -- a subject that is often discussed and little understood. I ended up focusing on the basics of what "corporate responsibility," "green," and "sustainability" really mean. ...

I'm a big fan of Jim Collins, author of the business classics Built to Last (with Jerry Porras) and Good to Great. In a special issue of Fortune magazine, Collins documents the amazing frequency with which Fortune 500 companies disappear from the list -- and often from existence. ...

I was not a fan of The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, the book that catapulted C. K. Prahalad to international fame in both traditional and responsible business circles. The book was much too excited at the prospect of using our short-sighted capitalistic model to sell little packages of laundry powder at reduced prices to poor people who probably don't need them. ...

Climate Counts just released its second annual ranking of big brands, and how they performed (or didn't) in regard to cutting CO2 emissions and fighting global warming. While the scorecard covers just 56 large organizations, it's definitely worth the few minutes it takes to check out where your favorite business ranks. ...

Recently the New York Times reviewed The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker, by Steven Greenhouse, a reporter for the newspaper. The book, published by Knopf last week, examines how companies like Fed Ex and Wal-Mart bleed workers to reap hundreds of millions of dollars in savings, and points to Patagonia and Costco as models that inspire employees to bring all of their creativity and passion to work every day. ...

Every day that the Bush administration stays in office we are less safe, and not just from growing worldwide terrorist networks. The administration is once again undermining the Environmental Protection Agency's ability to determine the health dangers of toxic chemicals by letting non-scientists have a large and often secret role in the vetting process. ...

I recently spent a day and a half in our quarterly board meeting. Many more hours went into preparing for it. I have put more than 30 years of my life into pre-meeting stress and anxiety and post-meeting exhaustion and reflection. These meetings are almost miniature rites of passage. Days of reckoning. ...

Anyone who's read this blog for a while knows that I'm no fan of Microsoft. I've owned a Mac my entire life. My one, brief experiment with a PC ended when I returned a wonderful little Sony Vaio because the software drove me out of my mind. ...

Recently, I spent the afternoon talking with David Suzuki, a man whose brilliance is matched only by his humility. Overlooking the St. Lawrence River in downtown old Montreal, we sat for several hours. David Suzuki is a rock star of the environmental movement in Canada, perhaps the US equivalent of Al Gore. His diversity of friends --from Anita Roddick and Richard Branson to Amory Lovins and Sir Isaac Stern -- shows he's a magnet for other extraordinary people. ...

Who wins when multi-national corporations acquire small, natural-products companies? The anecdotal evidence suggests it's not the entrepreneur. While there are a few potential success stories, such as Groupe Danone's acquisition of a majority stake in Stonyfield Farm and Estée Lauder's purchase of Aveda, there are more stories of sadness and regret -- Ben & Jerry's sale to Unilever and the Body Shop's sale to L'Oréal among them. ...