Tag Archives: innovation
Creating Meaningful Stardom: An Interview with Yoxi’s Sharon Chang
Posted on 20. Oct, 2011 by Gaia Dempsey.
Yoxi is an organization that elevates social entrepreneurs by leveraging their expertise for global business opportunities. It was founded in 2010 by Sharon Chang, former Chief Creative Officer at 19 Entertainment, the company behind mega-hit shows American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance.
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A Whale of Design: WhalePower Bumps into Engineering Innovation
Posted on 24. Aug, 2011 by Michael Chapdelaine.
The groundbreaking work of WhalePower: bringing new, high efficiency, tubercled airfoil designs to the marketplace. Stephen Dewar, VP of Business Affairs and Director of R&D, elaborates on their inspiration, discoveries, and practical applications in this exclusive, in-depth interview.
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Cradle-to-Cradle Design: Top 5 Fashionable and Biodegradable Products
Posted on 24. May, 2011 by Christopher Bay.
In the never-ending household battle against clutter, “down-cycling” is commonplace and often seen as a do-good practice. Along with changing the way consumers view and use products, items with short usable lives must be redesigned to either last longer or be transformed into a cradle-to-cradle life cycle where waste = food.
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Part 1 of 2: TOP 4 Sustainable Breweries in Celebration of American Craft Beer Week
Posted on 16. May, 2011 by Patrick Haase.
For the beer industry, “Reduce, Re-use, Recycle” isn’t just a convenient mantra or well-rehearsed platitude, it’s gospel. Many breweries are finding creative ways to reduce energy and raw material inputs, re-use water, and recycle waste outputs. Breweries are leaving no stone unturned, no avenue unexplored, to make their systems and processes more sustainable. There’s a synergy between profitability and sustainability – a good beer is an environmentally and socially conscious beer. So, as you knock back a few in celebration of American Craft Beer Week, you can drink knowing your suds are more than satisfying, they’re sustainable.
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A Second Look at Two Innovative Household Cleaners Featured at Opportunity Green 2010
Posted on 12. May, 2011 by OppGreen Insights.
When we buy those plastic bottles of cleaning product, we are really paying for large amounts of water. This also comes at a higher cost for the planet because of the greenhouses gases emitted during transport. Those bottles have virtually looked the same since they were introduced in the 1960s. Fifty years later, don’t you think we should have come up with a smarter, better way to do this?
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Livebloggers, Tweeters, Collaboration at Opportunity Green
Posted on 24. Sep, 2010 by Michael Liskin.
This is my traditional meta-post of real-time events during the Opportunity Green Conference
Check back periodically for additional info, and…
Follow @oppgreen on Twitter for official OG updates and live tweets.
The Official OG Live-Bloggers are from AHA! – Great work Laura, Melina, and Kristi!
For the FULL Opportunity Green Tweeting archive for OG2010: click this Twapperkeeper
And for the real-time Twitter Live Feed of the hashtag #og10: http://bit.ly/OG10twitter1
Twitter search for OppGreen: http://bit.ly/OG10Twitter2
Twitter search for “Opportunity Green” : http://bit.ly/OG10Twitter3
Please let me know when you blog or post about OppGreen 2010 (find me: @rhetor ) and I may add you to this or future lists!
Who were some Live-Bloggers at OG 2010?
Day 1:
“The idea, organizers said, is to show green companies that profit doesn’t have to be a pipe dream. While accepting her Eco-Maverick award, Rodriguez told attendees to “embrace the new era of capitalism.” Then, she showed off her deejaying skills at the after-party.”
http://mobilegive.us/2010/09/23/opportunity-green-conference-turns-to-mobilegive/
http://www.neenahpaperblog.com/2010/09/opportunity-green/
http://www.vcstar.com/news/2010/sep/23/green-businesses-hope-practices-go-mainstream/
“The conference, in its fourth year, brings together about 1,000 green business leaders to hear from speakers, talk with exhibitors and discuss their businesses. It’s the first time it has been held at Los Angeles Center Studios, with the main stage set up where the “Mad Men” TV show is filmed and the media room is created from Judge Judy’s courtroom.”
Day 2:
Alissa Walker:
http://www.good.is/post/get-to-know-50-sustainable-startups/
Mother Nature Network:
http://www.mnn.com/eco-biz/sustainable-business-practices/blogs/weekend-reads-green-business
Art Center College of Design:
http://blogs.artcenter.edu/dottedline/2010/09/24/summit-2/
Rickshaw Bags:
http://blog.rickshawbags.com/2010/09/24/green-product-innovation/
Upon Conference Completion:
(to be continued…)
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Opportunity Green at Dwell on Design
Posted on 02. Jul, 2010 by BenjiRosen.
Dwell Magazine hosted its annual exposition, “Dwell on Design,” this past weekend at the LA Convention Center beginning on Friday, June 25th, and lasting through Sunday, June 27th. The coordinators at Dwell applied the same inventive approach they practice in their publication as they showcased one of the most dynamic and creative ideas in modern aesthetic and architecture. Although building and design were the centerpieces of this three-day event, Dwell-on-Design attendees (which included architects, professionals and environmental enthusiasts) were also exposed to countless innovative eco-products and a collection of captivating speakers.
Dwell focuses on modern architecture and design in their magazine, so it follows that development in building and design should be a focus of the exposition too. To the delight of the conference attendees, the Dwell team made sure to shy away from anything ordinary.
Opportunity Green Hosts Panel at Dwell on Design
The exhibition showcased furniture, building materials, outdoor accessories, and energy and resources that the general public has never seen before. And, in addition to “Asia Now” (which brought together the best contemporary design from Asia with an emphasis on saving energy) and “Modern Family Zone” (offering important lessons in improvement and sustainability for the whole family), “Dwell on Design” also had installations inside the convention center highlighting many unique home concepts.
The founder of ecofabulous and a good friend to Opportunity Green, Zem Joaquin, led the charge for innovative, energy-saving home ideas. Joaquin was the lead designer of the “Modern Living Showhouse,” assembled by Reclaimed Space in Austin, Texas, and built from 80-90% salvaged material. Merging style, function, and environmental ethos, the house was furnished by over twenty different eco-products. Ecofabulous advertised the showhouse project on their website, claiming the products utilized were “carefully selected for their superior sustainability standards and design aesthetic. From the lush living wall to the smart, energy-efficient kitchen and laundry appliances to the gorgeous vintage furniture from eBay.” To read Ecofabulous’s full narrative about the “Modern Living Showhouse,” view pictures, and learn about the show houses’ charity auctioning on eBay, visit here.
Actually, it seemed like Opportunity Green had members of our team all around the Convention Center on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. We shared a corner space with Vapur, who designed and is selling a reusable water bottle that can be folded, rolled, flattened and frozen. While Vapur’s founder, Jason Carignan, were very busy selling out of Vapur’s innovative product, they also gave testimony on the OG Conference to all our booth visitors.
Carignan also hosted a panel on product design innovation with Nicole Landers, an OG board member and the founder of the sustainability firm, eConnect Group, and Peter Falt, the Director of Strategic Partnering for BMW Design Works. Our own dear Karen Solomon, co-founder and CEO of Opportunity Green and friend to all, was slated to anchor this panel but unfortunately lost her voice and could not participate. Landers came in as a last minute, and remarkable replacement. When thinking about his experience this weekend, Carignan admitted he “was really inspired by all of the great questions Peter Falt and [he] got from the attendees during our panel on an Insiders’ Look at a New Era of Design. Many of entrepreneurs and design professionals seeking ways to ensure their business are as sustainable as their products. I’m glad we were able to offer some practical guidance to realizing their vision.”
In fact, Nicole did a fantastic job stressing how important partnerships are in innovation and sustainability. Especially in design technology products, partnerships between the designers and their business-partners are what drive new ideas for better sustainability.
Events like Dwell on Design highlight the idea of collaboration and cooperation – ideas that Opportunity Green continues to champion. When we asked Nicole Landers what she came away with after hosting the panel, she discussed this theme of inter-connectedness, reiterating how in any smart technologies, along with having an innovative workable “public relations” are the stimulating feature. It is what steers the “three-way triangle” of people, profit, and planet onto a sustainable course.
As we come away from the conference of inspired designers and business professionals, it seems even more apparent that in order to create and maintain a market that supports both environmental incentive as well as bottom line, we have to come together. Opportunity Green 2010 has been built directly around the idea that only through partnerships and relationships can we truly make a difference. Please join us, September 22-24th at LA Center Studios for Opportunity Green: INTER 2010
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Interview with Real Food Daily’s Catering Director, Elisha Valdez
Posted on 26. Jan, 2010 by Brady Gibson.
The Clean Energy Economy is emerging. Jobs are being created across the spectrum and industries are going through fundamental shifts to adapt to an ever-changing world. Whether business strategies evolve out of necessity to government policy or wanting to both improve and incorporate the Triple Bottom Line, sustainability is creating jobs, expanding the market, and promoting economies of scale.
Opportunity Green strives to recognize leaders in sustainability and the green movement. Whether you are Proctor&Gamble or Ecovative Design, the OG team recognizes green greatness through green living–the difference between those who “say” it and those who “do” it. Furthermore, these companies and individuals create an impact bigger than their immediate size. They collaborate with business leaders, companies, and customers that value sustainable operations, community development, and a clean energy economy. Community-based and intrinsically tied between People, Planet, and Profit, sustainability is an emerging cultural ideology that requires innovation, integrity, and perseverance. One way to live green is to eat green. Restaurant sustainability is on the rise, yet there are a limited number of leaders and pioneers in the Green Restaurant Industry. As one of the most wasteful and rigid industries in the United States, the restaurant industry represents a major opportunity to find successful models, tools, ideas, and management systems for other industries and the wider Clean Energy Economy as a whole. Opportunity Green took the time to look within their green community for a leader in this category and all signs pointed to Real Food Daily. Starting out as a catering company for Hollywood moguls and superstars in the 1980′s, Real Food Daily opened its first restaurant in 1993 in Santa Monica, California, under owner Ann Gentry. Since then, it has emerged as the only restaurant in Los Angeles to serve a 100% vegan menu with foods grown solely from organic farming methods. According to Elisha Valdez, Catering Director at RFD, “the goal [...] is to introduce the Real Food Daily menu to as wide an audience as possible. We want to break the misconception that vegan food is bland, boring, and unappealing.” (If you don’t believe her, go try the nachos!) 
In addition to their delicious food, RFD is both a leader and pioneer in the green restaurant industry and had centered their operations on sustainable design long before “organic” became the buzz-word du jour. According to Elisha, RFD has bought organic for 17 years and has been a “pioneer in the efforts to advance awareness of the organic food segment of the market.” Did you know the carbon footprint of a non-meat eater is 1/7th the size of a meat eater, according to the U.N.I.P.C.C? That is a snippet of information that Elisha and others at RFD incorporate into their ideology and they live it daily. Furthermore, they influence the community by providing “people with a delicious opportunity to embrace a vegetarian diet–even it’s not everyday–[as] one of the best ways to support sustainable initiatives in the community”. Ultimately, RFD is about “the balance for both the environment and the body, [coming] from a Macrobiotic foundation [that] incorporate[s] the yin and yang of not only food, but life”.
Although RFD makes it look easy to both maintain and grow a sustainable restaurant industry, Elisha told us they still face daily challenges. ”One of our biggest struggles is communicating to the full extent of our commitment to organic foods and sustainability.” Indeed, one of the biggest struggles in the restaurant industry and sustainable operations is finding a way to transition the restaurant into green operations–a goal that starts at the fundamental operations and costs of the business. ”We see a lot of companies say ‘organic whenever possible’, but what they mean is ‘organic unless it’s too expensive or difficult to procure”. These words ring so true to Opportunity Green and other genuine companies in the clean green economy.
“The triple bottom line of people, planet, and profits, has always been at the core of what we do at RFD. Before there was even a term for it, we just felt that it was right for our business because it was the right thing to do. For us, its not a triple bottom line–it’s one bottom line that is inextricably connected between those three elements.” As we move into the future, Opportunity Green hopes to observe green methods in the restaurant industry and the positive impact of sustainable systems on business scalability.
