Clean 15 Series: The Water Opportunity

Last year, I went to see Michael Lee Chin speak at an event held at the prestigious Royal York Hotel, downtown Toronto. There were many pearls of wisdom, but there was one thing that really struck me during his delivery—he was always looking for an opportunity. Even in bad situations, Lee Chin believed opportunities lay in waiting. He told us about the saying, “In every crisis there is a danger and opportunity”.

The key is to respond to the opportunity before anyone else does.

In 2010, there is mounting evidence that a global water crisis is brewing and Ontario is moving to focus on the water opportunity it presents. Perhaps it might make some sense for us to briefly have a look at the crisis, the dangers and the opportunity. Then we can see what some Canadian cleantech companies are working on to meet the challenge and seize the water opportunity. Read Full Article

Clean 15 Series: Sustainability just makes good business sense

Wal-Mart recently announced that it was going to cut its emissions by 20 million metric tonnes by 2015. This means in five years the company plans to cut the equivalent of taking more than 3.8 million cars off the road, or all of its corporate emission for the year of 2010. To accomplish this feat, they will not be going the journey alone, but will spread the risk around to their suppliers. Wal-Mart will encourage its suppliers to reduce their carbon footprints in the process or they will not be included in the Wal-Mart supply chain. This move has major implications because Wal-Mart is a very big company. How big you ask? Well for starters Wal-Mart posted approximately $400 billion in revenue in 2009 with a net profit of approx $13 billion. According to the Fortune Global 500 it was ranked as the world’s largest public company in 2008 and has a supply chain that is tens of thousands of companies strong.

Wal-Mart will encourage its suppliers to reduce their carbon footprints in the process or they will not be included in the Wal-Mart supply chain. This move has major implications because Wal-Mart is a very big company. How big you ask? Well for starters, Wal-Mart posted approximately $400 billion in revenue in 2009 with a net profit of approx $13 billion. According to the Fortune Global 500 it was ranked as the world’s largest public company in 2008 and has a supply chain that is tens of thousands of companies strong.

The potential ramifications of “greening” the Wal-Mart supply chain are something that many companies around the world will have to respond to in one way or another. In one Wal-Mart news release, it was stated that the idea of corporate sustainability is no longer a conversation left for the fringe hippies in the office. Sustainability has moved into the mainstream and with careful application companies are learning that sustainability just makes good business sense. Read Full Article

Clean 15 Series: Can open innovation save Canadian clean technology?

It is no secret here in Canada that our clean technologies are world class. At the beginning of 2010, Sustainable Development Technology Canada—one of the largest clean technology portfolios anywhere on the planet—invested $58 million into 16 different projects, bringing their total up to $464 million, across a total of 183 projects.

Clean tech hubs and cluster partners like MARS and OCETA all focus on getting companies ready for the big show. But for far too many good companies, getting into international waters has still proven to be very difficult. Take the bankruptcy last year of VRB Power Systems. The company made long-term, large-scale storage batteries for the intermittent energy generated from renewable energy sources like wind and solar. This technology seemed critical, and since there were very few competitors in this space, one would think that it was going to be a great success story. The company in 2007 had sales of approximately $700,000 and by the following year approximately $500,000. Arguably a major part of the problem was access to capital and sophisticated customers that could help it to further define its product. The end result is potentially our loss as this company was put to rest and allowed to fade into obscurity.

The question then is not how Canadian clean technology companies create value (because clearly many of them are doing a fantastic job). The questions are, rather, how will they deliver value? And how will they capture that value? Read Full Article

Clean 15: Connecting Canadian clean tech with the Global 1000

Depending on whom you ask, Canada could be falling behind in what was described by U.S. President Barack Obama as the “space race” of our era. Obama is referring to clean technology, which he believes will drive the future of North American business. So getting Canada’s best in class clean technologies into international markets is nothing less than mission critical for Canada.

So far, Canada has done very well supporting the early research stages of clean technology, including many demonstration projects. However, the country has fallen short when it comes to commercializing those technologies at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars in returns.

Government spending to assist companies through what has been called the “valley of death” is one of Canada’s strengths, however finding capital sources to walk clean-tech firms through the second valley of commercialization death is very difficult. Connecting with sophisticated, large Global 1000 clients has also been proven to be a major challenge for Canadian clean-tech firms, and as a result many companies fail to make a significant footprint on the international stage.

With this notion in mind, The Canadian Business Journal and Drayton Weissenfels Inc—in association with Yet2.com, OCETA, Fogler, Rubinoff—are coming together to launch the first clean technology competition in 2010, the Clean 15. Read Full Article

yet2.com - Innovation’s leading match maker

You can think of yet2.com as an intermediary, an opportunity-finder, or more to the point, a link between those who sell and buy technologies. yet2.com seeks to partner otherwise estranged companies to maximize the return on everyone’s investments. On one side of yet2.com’s business is helping start-up companies with licensing, technology evaluation and acquisition, business development and R&D needs. The other side is finding larger companies with gaps that can be filled by externally produced technology.

The concept is called open innovation, and it propels the notion that large firms can and should use external ideas (as well as internal ideas) to advance their technology. Because knowledge is distributed differently (that is, on a global scale), new thinking says that companies cannot afford to rely solely on their own R&D departments. Instead, they should integrate the practice of buying or licensing processes or inventions from other companies. Read Full Article