Tips, News & Views / 166 posts found
Student startup connects local farmers with city dwellers
This startup goes to farmers who have excess produce, and links them to local (likely well-heeled) suburbanites who want to eat local food. Great match, satisfies a need, stops waste, and reduces the environmental hazards of moving food. Good luck to them. A model that surely could be replicated in a lot of places. See original article …
Edinburgh universities support low-carbon startups
In Edinburgh, the town’s 3 main universities are collaborating to help support SMEs with a low-carbon focus. 200 products and services have emerged in the last 5 years. See original article …
30 years guarantee on a t-shirt. How’s that for sustainability?
Following on from Patagonia’s lead, a number of startups are now creating clothing designed not to be thrown away every season. One brand even has a 30 year guarantee! Fantastic to see clothing sustainability. See original article …
What ONE Value Will Your Company Be Remembered For?
Summary Many companies have articulated a set of values. Their role ranges from covering stains on company walls to actually defining how the company does things. In most companies, one value reigns supreme. What that value is depends mostly on how the company is led and the authenticity of that particular value. Sometimes it is a value that isn’t articulated, but is the one that the founders or leaders demonstrate the most. Recommendation – take a hard look at the values your company…
How Culture Becomes Currency
… and how articulating values can hurt your company. Exec Summary Recent studies confirm that a positive culture has a direct impact on profitability. In addition, companies which have articulated values which they live up to outperform those that have none, while those that have articulated values which they fail to live up to underperform those that haven’t articulated any. Meaning it’s better not to talk about values if you can’t live up to them. At my last company,…
Startup aims to cultivate legit business skills in drug dealers
This startup aims to cultivate legit business skills in drug dealers. The founder, Bashaun Brown, is an ex-con who turned his shady business skills to good and is trying to get others to do the same. Funded by a grant for social entrepreneurship, he’s latched onto the need to get sustainable funding for his enterprise. I suspect it costs a lot less than locking someone up who’s more than likely to reoffend on release. See original article …
Using crowdfunding to ethically bribe companies to make social changes
Interesting take on crowdfunding. If there’s a company you’d like to see make an ethical change, you promise to spend cash there if they do it. If enough people pledging enough spending join you, and the company makes the change, you then spend your pledge and reward the company for ‘doing the right thing’. Ethical bribery! See original article …
How A Mexican Startup is Turning Mango Scraps Into Nutritional Gold
EatLimmo is making a success of recycling Mango waste to a nutritious powder that it sells to bakeries and others. An act of food alchemy, taking waste, turning it into something nutritious, and developing a profitable company along the way. Mango is just the start – they are looking at other foodwaste. Based in Mexico, there must be an opportunity to contact them to license the technology to use elsewhere and help their mission profitably? See original article …
How a Kenyan health startup is transforming the lives of families — one SMS at a time
Magnificent. Totohealth starts its SMS diagnostics while women are still pregnant, and carries on through the first few years of a child’s life. It doesn’t replace a doctor, clearly, but is a heck of a lot more than nothing at all as is often the case in rural Kenya where they operate. Not a charity, but a company which sells its service to parents, they typify what it can mean to do good while building a sustainable business. See more here.
Boston startups fight homelessness and offer a free year’s rent in Cambridge
Flutter is an interesting charity. It matchmakes between companies and local charities, allowing the companies to donate experiences as fundraising prizes for the charities. Interesting and simple model to allow companies to give more than a cash donation. See more here.