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Monthly Archives: February 2010

Gates Switches from Mosquitoes to Fireflies

Was sent a link to Bill Gates’s latest TED talk, on climate and energy, and watched this evening between sessions. This time, instead of releasing mosquitoes into the audience to… More…

How the Boomers Will Pay Back

David Metz, former Chief Scientist at the UK Department of Transport and one of the brains trust we are assembling for our project on ageing, entrepreneurship and sustainability, forwarded me… More…

Opening the Bloom Box

One of the cleantech firms that everyone here in California is watching closely is Bloom Energy, with their enigmatic countdown. 60 Minutes just did an interesting piece on them. Hard… More…

Green Cities Event in San Francisco

The Clean & Cool Mission to San Francisco is going very well, though I’m finding my frequent flights of recent days have hammered whatever it was that I got a… More…

Allocating Patient Capital

The funding options for social innovators is diversifying as investors, from private foundations to venture capitalists, experiment with social impact investing. This area, appealingly re-branded ‘patient capital’, is developing fast,… More…

A Social Enterprise ‘Square Mile’ for London?

Was very interested to see the proposal that “a social enterprise ‘square mile’, similar to London’s Canary Wharf business district, should be created as part of the 2012 Olympic legacy.”… More…

The Coming Clash of Generations

Am preparing to lead a joint SustainAbility/Volans Book Club session tomorrow evening, which will focus on George Friedman’s The Next 100 Years. Reading it in its entirety recently on a… More…

Brilliant Ideas – Pepsi and the Business of Social Innovation

I was impressed to see Pepsi taking on a new kind of challenge – looking for ways to catalyze social innovation through their Refresh Everything Campaign. Social innovation is about… More…

The Phoenix Economy, Take 2

A central theme in our 2009 report The Phoenix Economy was that the global economy was embroiled in something very different to a normal recession – and that the dynamics… More…

Spawning the Social Equivalents of Steve Jobs

I missed this when it first came out in the New York Times, but picked it up via Facebook today. Tom Friedman suggests some of the things Barack Obama should… More…

Clean & Cool Mission on YouTube

Later in the month, we are part of a Study Mission to California and Silicon Valley, co-organised with Polecat and the UK Technology Strategy Board. An interview of principals of… More…

Situational vs. Sustainable Values

I really like this piece by Tom Friedman, finding the distinction between situational and sustainable values both insightful and helpful.

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