A friend of our CEO, Jeff Wolfe, sent this cartoon to him and boy does it speak volumes. Click on the picture below to see the full image size or Follow The Link.

“Only when the last tree is cut; only when the last river is polluted;

only when the last fish is caught; only then will they realize that you cannot eat money.” -Cree Indian Proverb

This is a crazy idea. And I wish I was not here. But sometimes the only sane alternative is to be crazy, and sometimes we have things we NEED to get done.

The steps outlined here are all necessary, fundamental, and critical to business growth. groSolar is a fantastic example of what our economic system can do and repeat. Unfortunately, creating 20, even 100 companies like groSolar does not solve our problem. What we need is the integration of all the ideas presented here and more, across the economy. We need a realization that together, as community in the broadest sense of the word, not only do we all thrive, it’s actually the only way we can survive. As I said above, the confluence of events that brings us here today is no less than the need to reorder our economy, restructure the biggest industry in the world (energy), retrain a huge percentage of our workforce, and save our planet.

I’ve said before that I’m an evolutionary technology person (there is no silver bullet), and a revolutionary business person. Of course, I’m evolutionary in a rapidly changing technology driven world, and I’m revolutionary in a market-driven economy. But listen to where we need to go. I warn you that I am not an economist, or even a learned student of business. I am a person operating in this environment, I sometimes feel thrust in from the outside. This perspective has often been useful, as well as frustrating, (some would say dangerous), but it is my perspective on where we need to go. Read the rest of this entry »