The Business Case for Optimist Companies

With full awareness that most of our recent posts have been about "Green," neglecting the rest of the Optimist World, here's more food for thought that, on the surface, is more green-centric: collected thoughts on the business case for doing well while doing good.

Here's Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy outlining the looming opportunity in clean, climate-friendly technology for ZD Net. Takeaway: Joy is not the first, but among the more luminary, celebrity-entrepreneurs to point out the financial stupidity of NOT seizing the opportunity: "...it has a negative cost and a competitive disadvantage if you DON'T do it..."

Next up is New York Times slugger Thomas Friedman (from an April issue of the Sunday magazine) on the global possibilities of the "Green" movement in the U.S. The "The World is Flat" author puts green into a patriotic context Takeaway: It's long and I see a book coming, but Friedman's energy-centric exploration of the Green Opportunity is optimistic that US government and industry can capitalize on the nascent green energy movement and innovate our way back into our "natural place in the global order."

Finally, if a journalists's opinion isn't financially convincing, here's an endorsement of green technology from perhaps the savviest investor of all time, legendary venture capitalist John Doerr of Kleiner, Perkins, Caulfield & Byers. Doerr and KPCB, whose past hits include Amazon, Netscape and Google, are said to be earmarking $100M of their latest $600M fund in "greentech" (sometimes "cleantech") startups amid the continental shift of over $1.5B annually to such companies.

Also mentioned in that story is KPCB star Vinod Khosla, who last year launched Khosla Ventures to focus mostly on alternative fuels (although check out "The Things We Care About" on their site, which covers microfinance, education, Vinod's clean energy ballot initiatives, and other Optimist interests). Here's TheStreet.com's Chuck Marvin on one recent Khosla investment of Gevo Inc., a Pasadena-based biofuels startup.

The most accomplished investors and savviest start-up'ers out there are putting their money where many people's green mouths are. So, as entertaining as The Optimist may be, don't take our word for it that real business people consider it a serious opportunity to do good.