Green Innovation - Growing a Green Business - How to Find the Money

Green Innovation can be incremental, an effort to embed environmental attributes in existing products, services, or business practices. It can also be radical, developing entirely new markets based on being completely green.Either way, the process to find the opportunity and understand how to capitalize on it is the same. Start by understanding the market, look for unmet needs or emerging trends, identify solutions for problems engendered in either, test them in market, and refine/enhance them until ready for rollout.The first step is to understand the market. If your innovation is incremental, you can rely on tried and true market research methods. However, if your intent is to be radical, the process itself must be innovative. Traditional inputs plus traditional methods yields incremental results. Creative inputs plus cutting-edge methods yields transformative opportunities.Examples of creative inputs include: conducting ethnography studies in markets where your product or service is utilized very differently, and looking at different industries and how they address analogous issues.Cutting-edge insights techniques are those which get at root psychological issues, needs, and cognition. Thus, look to state of the art cognitive and behavioral psychological research techniques and apply them in business. Be careful who you employ to conduct the research to ensure the techniques are executed properly and the findings are valid.Once you have insight on unmet needs and emerging trends in your field of discovery, you are ready to define problem statements around which you will conduct creative problem-solving exercises (commonly known as ideation).Here too, traditional methods yield incremental results. Approach this with the goal of generating lists of ideas and you will have lots of marginal ideas. On the other hand, approach this as a visualization exercise with the goal of producing finished concepts and you are more likely to achieve a breakthrough.Either way, concepts must be tested for appeal, understanding, and relevance. Additionally, concept attributes will be evaluated and data gathered for understanding the target market. The data is both quantitative, such as overall appeal, and qualitative, including the comments the test audience makes about concept.Ideally, you will then offer the concept as a live product, service, or hybrid on a limited scale, i.e., a beta test or prototype. The interaction employees and customers have with a live prototype is invaluable. There are always unintended benefits and consequences.Also use the prototype to engage your customers in the innovation process by providing forums or channels for them to give you insight on their experience. Profile the prototype customers and segment their behavior with the product or service to more fully understand where the larger-scale opportunity lies.With all the learning you gain throughout the process, you are well positioned to succeed with your green innovation objectives. Additionally, you can use this process to innovate not just with customers, but also with employees and suppliers to green-up your business practices and supply chain.Green innovation can be successful in either adding green attributes to existing products or services, or developing revolutionary new green offers. Either way, there is green in green.

Green Business, Green Marketing

If you have a business of any sort, green marketing is likely to become part of your marketing plan. Consumers are becoming very savvy about realizing that they are voting in a way when they spend their money. The number of shoppers who consider environmental factors with their purchases is growing all the time.More and more shoppers filter their buying decisions through the questions of how your product could have deleterious effects on the environment or on their own health. If they have children, they may be particularly sensitized to these issues, and as a general thing, the younger shoppers take these matters more seriously. After all, they have grown up with a greater environmental awareness than older people did, and the issues are both more widespread and more widely known now.There is justifiably a lot of cynicism among consumers about whether companies are telling the truth or are just jumping on the green bandwagon. This means that you can't simply repackage your products to have green colored boxes or a jolly slogan on the front. If you don't walk your talk, people will find you out. Doing the right thing for the environment will reward you. Be clear and honest in your packaging, your promotions, and your website about what you are doing.Now in some situations, to go completely green would be so prohibitively expensive that it would put you out of business. People understand that you can't necessarily disconnect from the power grid and use solar panels to run your manufacturing plant... at least not yet! What you need to do is to evaluate what you can do and what will have the largest beneficial effect on the environment and on consumers' health. Companies that do this will be more likely to thrive.The market for green or eco-friendly products includes things like simple household cleaners without a long string of chemicals on the label, fragrance-free toiletries and cosmetics that have not been tested on animals, organically grown food, and natural fiber clothing. Recycled office paper and other products created with recycled materials are also likely to do well, provided that they are well made. People are looking more for long-term value, a trend that is likely to continue.Another aspect of green business is locality, or how close to the consumer the product was created. This is particularly true of fresh foods - not just produce but meats as well. People are becoming more aware of the fuel costs, both in money and in environmental burden, of things transported long distances. This awareness is a strong driver of the localism movement. Also, many of us are realizing that oil is not going to last forever.All of these factors can create challenges for your business - and also opportunities.

What is Green Business?

Many new and old businesses are choosing to go green. Philosophies are changing and many business owners and entrepreneurs are putting the environment at the forefront of their operations. It will be helpful to better understand what this type of business is, how to find ideas, and five current business opportunities that exist.Defining Green BusinessA green business is one that does not have a negative impact on the environment. There are certain principles that help to define whether or not a business is green. These include adding sustainability principles to each business decision, replacing non-green services or products with environmentally friendly services or products, is greener than the competition, and has committed to long term success following environmental principles.There are some essential characteristics for sustainable business. One of the most important essentials that can be found in all green businesses is the triple top line production value. This means that a business is pursuing three main goals simultaneously. These include financially benefiting the company, bettering the world naturally, and providing social advantages to employees as well as members of the community.Finding Green Business IdeasThere are several different ways to find business ideas that are green. There are magazines that provide information and resources specifically about green business. This is an excellent way to learn about building sustainable companies as well as keep up on trends. It is also possible to visit a green business blog or attend a green business conference in order to become fully immersed within this industry. This will be one of the fastest ways to find out current trends and ideas that are becoming popular. The difficult part about looking for opportunities this way is that there are not a lot of conferences that occur and there are not a lot of blogs that offer great information. The websites that are available do provide a tremendous level of excellent information for entrepreneurs to read.5 Green Business Opportunities for EntrepreneursThese generally can be broken down into three different categories, which include recycling, reducing, and reusing. Following these three guidelines can be helpful to for someone that is looking for green business opportunities.Below are 5 green business opportunities that have great potential, especially during recessionary times.1) Open up a barter business:A barter system allows businesses and consumers the opportunity to trade goods without the exchange of currency. Products and services can be exchanged for other products or services without money changing hands. Money can be made from a barter exchange by charging a small fee for each transaction that takes place.2)Rainwater Harvesting and Catchment Systems:This idea involves capturing fresh rain water using containment systems. With the world's fresh water supply declining, there has become an increased demand for inexpensive rain water harvesting systems. Green entrepreneurs can help to distribute these water harvesting systems to people in third world countries.3) Recycled products:Manufacturing new items out of recycled products is another growing trend in green business. Entrepreneurs are taking others peoples junk and are using it to make new items that can be sold on the marketplace.4) Luxury leasing:Luxury leasing is an excellent idea to generate revenue by renting out high end merchandise. Consumers are interested in luxury items, but don't have the same desire to buy these items. By renting out luxury shoes, hand bags, & accessories, you generate repeat revenue off a single purchase of a luxury item, which gives you a terrific return on investment.5) Microfinance & Social Capital Investing:Microfinance can be defined as a way for people with low income to be able to secure micro loans when they do not have access to other financing sources. It works by allowing poor people to borrow money from peer to peer or similar lending institutions. Money can be made from this business idea from fees collected as well as interest charged.Green business ideas can be a great way to make money and do something great for the environment at the same time. For those that are interested, there are even green home business opportunities that exist that allow people to start a small business from the comfort of their own home.