tag:typepad.com,2003:weblog-1566842 2012-01-26T23:44:44-08:00 The nexus of sustainable business and innovation TypePad tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e5502276a9883401676114c962970b 2012-01-26T23:44:44-08:00 2012-01-27T14:45:24-08:00

Sometimes you meet someone who goes after a big idea and can enthuse his family, friends and others to join the adventure and to make a difference in this world. It does not happen that often. Maybe more often than none in the Silicon Valley, where Apple and Google where started in family garages. That is what happened to me when I interviewed Mathias Craig who co-founded blueEnergy with his brother Guillaume and his childhood friend Lâl Marandin to bring basic energy and clean water services to poor population off the grid. By the end of our chat, I could not help caring about his cause because his passion is not just about finding a technical solution or helping others. It is about connecting people, and this goes beyond infrastructure. More than 1.5 billion people still do not have access to electricity. Actually there are more people without basic lighting today than at the time of Thomas Edison. Some populations like the ones on the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua live outside the pyramid, with little resources and in remote areas. That is where Mathias and Blue Energy come in to play.

Olivier Jerphagnon http://greenfrog.typepad.com/weblog/2012/01/mathias-craig.html tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e5502276a988340168e5d00385970c 2012-01-19T18:45:40-08:00 2012-01-19T19:02:07-08:00

A delegation of companies from the French cluster in Provence area is visiting Silicon Valley this week. They connected with other French entrepreneurs in Palo Alto yesterday. It was the opportunity to compare cleantech activities in US and Europe. The South East is the first region of France in photo-voltaic power generation, and has an important nuclear industry. Provence has been working on the Environment before cleantech came to age. "It was more of an associative movement back then. We have since reworked our strategic plan." stated Carine Schlewitz of the Technopolis Arbois Mediterranee. “Renewable energy is now a strong and clear vector of economic growth” explained Pascal Rioual who heads the clean technology cluster Cap’Energies. The French Government has borrowed more than $1Bn towards sustainable infrastructure, and first smart grid projects have been awarded. If Southern California is often compared to the French Riviera for its mild climate and quality of life, many clusters would like to be associated with Silicon Valley. Provence is actually a fairly high-tech area with semiconductor factories. Gemplus is world-known for smart cards, commonly used in Europe for credit cards and other transactions. IBM once had a large campus in Sophia Antipolis near Nice, and many US companies still have offices. But the comparison with Silicon Valley stops there.

Olivier Jerphagnon http://greenfrog.typepad.com/weblog/2012/01/french-cleantech-cluster-in-silicon-valley.html tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e5502276a988340167604080ce970b 2012-01-17T09:38:57-08:00 2012-01-17T22:28:48-08:00

WaterWalla opened its first store last summer in Dharavi, a slum in the city of Mumbai used as backdrop in the Oscar-winning film Slumdog millionaire. The reality on the ground is rough: 1.5 million people in less than a square mile area with little acess to clean water. If people in India can typically walk less than a mile to have access to water, contamination is a prevalent issue in slums. I wanted to do something pragmatic about it and leverage the opportunities I had while a pre-med student at Brown University. The project started with six students at Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design dreaming that they could make a positive impact in the world: Anshu Vaish, Soaib Grewal, Aamer Hassanally,Angad Koshar, and Neil Parikh. Five of us were of Indian heritage. After exploring several problems and considering aspects such as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, we decided to focus on the problem of safe drinking water in the urban slums of India. Since then, WaterWalla has grown to 17 students in the US and 3 full-time staff in Mumbai thanks to the support from Brown University as well as grants from IBM and Dell. One of the co-founders, Soaib, moved to Mumbai after graduating from Rhode Island School of Design to open the first store with a local entrepreneur and the help of a business manager.

Anshu Vaish http://greenfrog.typepad.com/weblog/2012/01/waterwalla.html