Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Ecopreneurship

I recently attended the Babson College Entrepreneurship Research Conference (BCERC), the premier conference for entrepreneurship research. I attended a couple of paper sessions on social entrepreneurship, but there was only one on sustainable- or eco-preneurship. Academically, there seems to be a greater interest in the sociatel than the environmental business. In fact, over the last few years nearly every time there is a paper or session on sustainable business/entrepreneurship, it is always tied with social business/entrepreneurship (and usually ends up being secondary). While I realize the triple bottom line does often represent sustainable views I wonder if sustainable business/entrepreneurship can ever stand on its own. The issue may be that sustainable business is just what many of think of as the way all business should be, but social enterprises are a distinct subset. So I pose the question to those of you that consider yourself ecopreneurs - is there a social aspect to your business philosophy and if so is it equal to, less than or greater than the environmental aspect?

1 comment:

Palmetto - Tarheel Green Lighting said...

I am hosting a "Green Jobs" Summit at Denmark Tech on July 15. Representatives from the Rocky Mountain Institute and several Federal Agencies will be in attendance. My email address is charriford@gmail.com. I would like to email you with more information.

Chip Harriford