Magsaysay Award for Harish Hande, SELCO

Wonderful and well deserved: Harish Hande, of Bangalore founder SELCO, has received the Magsaysay Award, often described as the Nobel Prize of Asia. Congratulations. Selco Solar Pvt. Ltd,, founded as a social enterprise, is a provider of solar power technology to the poor.

Additionally from Carl Pope, Chairman, The Sierra Club:

Now two of our key India partners are being similarly recognized, and it honors us to be associated with them. The Barefoot University, led by Bunker Roy, was the first winner of the Sierra Club's Green Livelihoods Award and has now received Japan's prestigious environmental award, the Blue Planet Prize.

http://www.skollfoundation.org/barefoot-college-wins-625000-environmental-award/. 

And one of our key on-the-ground partners, Harish Hande, of the Solar Electric Company of Bangalore (SELCO), has received the Magsaysay Award. http://bit.ly/pgwoIx

It's fantastic to see the wonderful work done by these two organizations recognized, and I want to thank our India pioneers and friends for helping the Club identify and support them.

thanks Carl.

Lessons from Panel- Emerging Markets: Greening Tech

Emerging Markets: Greening Tech was the theme of a panel moderated by Joel Makower of GreenBiz.com at the annual WITI (Women in Technology International) Summit earlier this week. Panelists Lorie Wigle (GM, Eco-Technology Program INTEL), Melody Haller (CEO, Antenna Group) and Bill Weihl (Google with the kick-ass title of Green Energy Czar) presented credible stories of how they got into the green energy space. Lorie said she took advantage of the Intel culture- If you see a problem own it.Her program is about exploring the smart grid for Intel products (new or existing). Her team is a lens into the opportunity area - the typical team profile is a person with a key skill, rounded out by an ability to see the whole solution - what role Intel plays what roles others play - Once an opportunity is identified the standard Intel businesses take it on. She said she had a hard time finding the right mix of skilled people (even though it seems that today everyone ants to be in the green space) - since the job is so new - they are called solution architect - the closest she could find in Intel HR nomenclature.
Melody said her job is propaganda for the good guys - technology for good. She says a number of folks she gets are "technology refugees" - people tired of doing technology that makes no difference. Such people make great hires because they have the technical skills but want change. She had hired 12 people from greendreamjobs.com. Her advice - identify one strong entry point (your skill) as an entry into the field and then build out the rest.
Bill came to Google from MIT from a CS background wanting to get  into the green space. The .org part of Google is investing in renewable - about 9 companies with a total of about 65mil. The .org is 1% of Google (money, hr etc). Often .org arm searches the opportunity and google company may take on product development also. He said Google is not hiring since they already have projects in the pipeline.

With a title like Emerging markets I had expected to hear more about innovation with developing countries. When asked all said that they had projects in emerging economies. Intel had an initiative around Concierge services and satellite based water management. Google, besides google earth had agriculture, cook-stoves etc on their radar. Bill agreed that the faster adoption of renewable technologies would happen in emerging markets (leapfrog effect). Melody had connections in Kubera and a couple of other funds.

In sum, the activity in green-space has ramped up considerably in the last 4 years- it means more competition but  also more opportunity for the right person.

IBM Water Services Business will open doors for green innovation

I love this latest announcement from IBM Global Services - a new business in water purification and management that could become $20 billion in 5 years - and not just because it makes great headlines (Blue goes Green, IBM Dives into Water, Water is the New Oil... - there are tons of links out there). Its about scale. IBM's announcement leads the way for large corporations to think entrepreneurial; think "smart" - find a big problem that needs solving, apply a healthy dose of technology, innovate and get a new business going. Entrepreneurs have been thinking smart in this space; but when it comes to infrastructure kinds of issues, there is a big gap in innovating smart and taking the innovation to market and repeat the cycle. Because the business model is a little more convoluted and sustainability takes longer to achieve there is not enough VC money around and there it is too much risk for government funding other than the slow university channel. IBM will be able to bring technology, staying power as well as a business model to the green business. So it will endure and scale- hopefully. And a host of new businesses will emerge in this space. This announcement reminds me of the early days of the software industry; I am from the time when software had no business model - we were subsidised by hardware dollars. It just needed Microsoft to get big - and that spawned a whole lot of innovation in software. At that time, startups had one exit strategy - get bought up by Microsoft - and VC dollars became available. Not to mention all the other big businesses that got into the space. So that is why the IBM announcement is so great - its great for IBM (especially since water is just one of a host of other infrastructure services they are looking at) and great for launching innovation to solve a critical environmental issue. Apologies to folks who wanted to hear more about the technology - which is absolutely fascinating - maybe later..This time it is about my favourite subject - How technology+business = social impact scaled. And the fact that big business is getting into it.