John Doerr, Ben Godhirsh, Gaiam and Change

ZDNet leads us off with some coverage of one of our favorite social entrepreneurs, Steve Glenn of LivingHomes, who literally introduced this Optimist to the phrase "Profit and Purpose" during a chat at Pepperdine University two years ago. The author dwells on the apparent lack of privacy in a LivingHome, given the demo's (and Glenn's home's) many windows. Dwell-caliber design critique it's not, but all coverage is good, I suppose, with Glenn's goal of hundreds of homes over the next few years.

Silly author above, though, links us to a bit on summer 2007's Solar Decathlon, in which 20 universities competed in a Department of Energy contest to create a village of off-the-grid homes on the National Mall. Champion: Germany's Technische Universitat Darmstadt. University of Maryland was runner-up.

Inhabitat shows us this Taiwanese solar-powered car (don't look at it if you're predisposed to believing that "good" vehicles are "ugly") out of a university project.

Meanwhile this LA-based company, Venture Vehicles, led by Rick Balsiger, has a great-looking site, and a much more attractive three-wheeler.

Nice Motley Fool follow-up on legendary VC John Doerr's continued commitment to cleantech; he has previously called environmentally-friendly technologies the Biggest Economic Opportunity of this Century. (Needless to say, this is one investor to take cues from). The Fool's spin this time is on which large industrials (BP, DuPont) will jump on Doerr's bandwagon to reduce greenhouse gas 25% by 2010.

From the LA Times archives: a 2006 profile of young social entrepreneur and philanthropist Ben Goldhirsh, founder of Good Magazine and Reason Pictures

The Daily Green reports on the continued growth of $70M Boulder-based Gaiam, the "mother of all green product marketers," with 10,000 offerings.

Here's the blog of workplace revolutionaries Cali and Jodi, authors of Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It and pioneers of ROWE (the Results-Only Work Environment.

Today's post on Change in the above blog made me think of how difficult Change is, and I recalled a 2005 Fast Company by article called Change or Die on that topic. This article is one of the two or three most stimulating things I've ever read.

Fantastic web home of The Good Store, a beautiful and simple Australian purveyor of stuff that is good. Not Good, good, in the sense that we normally discuss it here. Just...good, as in gifts, mostly, from a Bialetti Moka Express to a Hohner Harmonica.

Social Entrepreneur points to non-profit Conscious Lifestyle's Ventures program, which (with Youth Ventures) awards $1000 seed prizes to social innovators. Deadline: Feb. 15.