[greenyes] A Registry of Environmental Problems for Entrepreneurs

["Bill Sheehan" <bill.sheehan@no.address>]

Got an environmental problem that needs solving?
Byron Kennard heads the Center for Small Business and the
Environment (www.csbe.org), an organization supporting innovative
entrepreneurs working on environmental solutions.
/Bill S.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Csbe2000@no.address
Sent: Friday, August 29, 2003 1:27 PM
Subject: Byron needs an idea from you

Here's an idea I'm testing.  I could use your help if you are willing to put
your brain to work on this for a moment or two. Thanks, Byron

THE GREEN GAZELLE EXCHANGE

A Registry of Environmental Problems for Entrepreneurs

Put a problem in front of an entrepreneur and there's a chance it will be
solved on the spot. Here's a famous instance.

On a sunny day in 1944 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a father was taking
photographs of his three-year-old daughter.  The little girl asked when she
could see her picture. "It will take a few days," her father replied. "But,
Daddy," the little girl cried," I want to see it now!"  Within an hour, the
father -- whose name was Edwin H. Land -- conceived the idea of instant
photography.  Thus, the Polaroid camera was born.

Here's another instance, not yet famous, though maybe it should be.

A long haul truck driver was out hunting one weekend with his
brother-in-law, A.C. Wilson, a Tellico Plains, Tennessee, contractor.
"Bob," he said to Wilson," you're always solving problems, why don't you
solve mine?  I can't get a decent night's sleep when I'm on the road."

The challenge posed to Wilson was this: how could a truck driver park, shut
off the engine (along with its noise, fumes and vibration) and still stay
warm or cool, as needed?

It so happened that the hunting party was staying overnight at a RV park.
During the night, A.C. tackled the challenge, sketching the first design for
an independent, external system that would deliver to a truck cab the same
sorts of services inherent in a RV. The next morning he presented his
sketches to his brother-in-law, and then and there IdleAire Technologies
Corporation was launched.

These examples lead me to posit my own simple statement of a need going
unmet. Why isn't there a system for collecting, describing and listing
environmental problems so that problem-solving entrepreneurs can easily
review them?

And since I am something of an entrepreneur myself, let me posit the
solution: the creation of The Green Gazelle Exchange, a website where anyone
who wants to can post an environmental problem.  Entrepreneurs would be
encouraged to visit this site to see if there's a problem they can solve.

I see this as a rather simple proposition. The Green Gazelle Exchange would
be free and open to all comers.  It shouldn't be expensive. To succeed this
will require a promotion campaign to make environmentalists aware of the
site and to get them to register problems on the site.  An equivalent
promotion campaign will be needed to get entrepreneurs to visit the site.
Maybe the site could be operated in cooperation with Entrepreneur magazine.

I'd like to test this idea so I am sending this initial draft to a small
group of environmentalists that I think might be good original contributors
of ideas to the Green Gazelle Exchange.  I am asking YOU to submit a brief
description of an environmental problem you'd like to have solved.  Please
let me hear from you.

Byron Kennard, Executive Director
The Center for Small Business and the Environment
P.O. Box 53127
Washington, DC  20009

(Phone)  202.332-6875
(Fax) 202.332-8355
email: csbe2000@no.address
www.aboutcsbe.org
www.greengazelles.org