Green innovation is not a matter of choice anymore

The term disruptive innovation was nailed by Clayton Christensen in the late 90s and is ever since enriched with various examples from broad spectrum of industries, such as education, telecommunications, semiconductors, aviation, healthcare, etc.

What concern us, though, are the threats and the opportunities green disruptive innovations create in our world, and the green solutions they have yet to offer to the business and society in the 21st century.

What we face today is economical crisis, coupled hand in hand with environmental crisis. Our major concern for decades has been the limited fuel supply and the indefinite demand for energy sources. The due diligence on climate change and pollution, it was not us to take care of that: the future generations were expected to clean the slate and to find the exit from the labyrinth. Wrong we were. Acceleration of demand, brought us closer to the edge than ever anticipated. The aim to reduce the rate of climate change is not good enough anymore. Low carbon economy is not good enough aim anymore. The ultimate target are zero emissions or zero carbon economy. Pioneer states, such as Iceland and Sweden have established their own goals in this direction. It is already late for whatever has to be done is, so change and action are needed. NOW.

We need to innovate in order to solve numerous problems. How can the two different routes can lead us to zero carbon economy, shed a light on the path to non-carbon industries and past-carbon businesses? A direct comparison follows.

Disruptive vs. Sustaining Innovations

Sustaining innovations would be Carbon Capture and Storage for CO2 (the shore countries of North Sea shelf has been quite keen supporters of that idea already); improvement of wastewater treatment techniques based on physical and chemical filtration; research and development on more efficient and more effective nanofilters for capture of greenhouse and toxic gases. To reduce the enlargement of The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, we need to do the greatest sustaining innovation of all: to reduce our waste, to reuse some of it and to recycle the rest, with special attention paid to plastics and toxins.

Disruptive, however, will be those innovations that will not only solve our growing energy requirements, but will also provide for the environmental issues, such as pollution, wastewater and solid waste disposal, climate change, greenhouse and toxic gases mitigation. Innovations that are cheap and easy to implement, will address our individual consumer needs and will fulfill our drive for simpler, yet profitable carbon-independent enterprises.

Those innovations deliver for our ever-growing energy needs cheaper and more effective technology for biofuels and then deliver the biofuels themselves. They do not endanger the local and global food supply on the expense of the fuels and alleviate the inheritant social conflict and debate around fuel vs food. Green Disruptive Innovations successfully handle the environmental concerns as they mitigate greenhouse gases via photosynthetic fixation of CO2 into biomass, hence to biofuels of third generation. Clean, Smart, Renewable (CSR). Surely, fit for socially responsible corporations. Do you have one of those?

While this idea might be sci-fi to many of our readers, some C-suite executives among you will think of these incentives:

• you can reduce your business’ environmental impact and carbon footprint,
• and simultaneously increase your profit and economical status.

Can you imagine the new market niche: one that provides the ability to recycle your industrial waste and to biotransform it into fuel for the industrial plant own operational and technological cycle input?

Yes, you can.

In a series of blog posts we will further elaborate on the CO2 mitigation via a biotechnological system as an example of a disruptive technology (it is not merely an innovation any more), with a detailed analysis of its opportunities and risks, current and future competition and the strategic choices that need to be taken on many levels in between.

Crisis as an opportunity for green technology implementation

The last twelve months were maybe not so great for your business. You could blame the financial crisis or the consumption decline. But actually, it doesn’t matter, because the question is whether your business will survive or not.

After the financial crisis many things will not be the same, many (used to be) stable businesses will be gone. They will be gone, not because of the crisis itself.They will suffer from their own rigidity and lack of adaptation skills for the new green consumer era.

The need for reduction of non-renewable energy sources was obvious even for the much criticized autocrat - Shah of Iran in the early ’70s. Now, forty years later, are you still not convinced that the industrial processes should go in greener direction?

Even though renewable energy technologies are applicable, these are still thought of as some exotic fruit, a fashion may be. Yes, many of them need a few more years to be viable and to make sense to your business, but it is not only the CSR that counts. Let’s take, for example, the algae biodiesel technology - it is a quite simple concept, but it took over thirty years to be applied in pilot plants. It is not that expensive (after all you need only water and sun, and the hole in the ground), and you get several times more biofuel compared to average plant source of oil, based solely on CO2 mitigation.

Crisis is a moment of evaluation and hard decisions, but you could make it a time for green technology implementation and good decisions. Now is the exact moment for real business model re-evaluation. Do you think you could end up greener and in addition survive the crisis?

Yes, you can.