How the green economy will pull the US out of recession by LINDSAY SCHERR

LINDSAY SCHERR

By LINDSAY SCHERR

At this point, “Green” means a few things in the American marketplace: marketing or “green washing”; saving money as a bi-product of an increase in efficient procedures, manufacturing, and facility modifications; renewable energy generation; and overall innovation of the way we do things.

Innovation creates jobs, because someone has to make the new products, and then service the new way of doing things. Looking at ways to redesign our processes and the way we use resources and energy is crucial, not only to the planet, but there are many ways to cut expenses and reduce waste. There are many technologies out there that are simple to implement, and make enormous difference. Change equals the opportunity to create something new. We are in a new paradigm. We must innovate because as the economy indicates, the old way of doing things no longer works.

At Celadon, we offer Energy Management to large commercial property owners to help them cut costs by helping them to visualize, analyze and optimize their real-time energy use for maximum savings. Building owners save money, reduce common area costs, and can turn around and market their building as more energy efficient or green, which is attractive to eco-minded, yet financially concerned Tenants. In this case, the business saves money; the buildings become more valuable; systems run smoother and more efficiently and as a bi-product help people be Greener without a lot of effort or major capital outlay. Solutions that save money by creating more efficiency are prolific; they just need to be implemented. Those money savings can in turn be reallocated for new jobs. For example, when we are able to save a client $100,000 annually, they can hire new people or give higher returns to their investors.

Green innovation impacts both sides of the P & L statement. There are always better ways to do things. Innovation and change can bring about amazing results that increase marketability and sales while saving money and reducing the environmental impact. We have an opportunity to look for alternative that will do all the things listed above. Being efficient, being innovative, (AKA green) is just smart business.

Contact: LINDSAY SCHERR, Principal

WE CUT YOUR ENERGY COSTS WITH REAL-TIME MONITORING

Office: (877) 722-1028

www.CeladonEnterprises.com

Twitter.com/CeladonEnt

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Innovation in America

Mark Adkins

There is no question that innovation (as defined by President Obama) is THE engine for growth and prosperity in America. With a long tradition of innovators, in particular Thomas Edison and his R&D Center at Menlo Park, the United States has been the world’s leader in innovation. Yet it seems that other nations are bypassing the U.S. and that is of great concern. The recent NAM/BCG Survey on Innovation ranked the United States eighth in the world behind nations such as Singapore, South Korea and Switzerland.

There are two critical areas that are holding back our ability to lead the world again in innovation. One is based around a lack of information. We lack data and therefore do not act aggressively to elevate our inventiveness. The other is policy based and can be fixed by local, state and the federal governments.

We have no baseline of innovation activity. There is no active, current measurement for innovation activity in the U.S. There are over a half dozen indexes, reports and surveys that are published annually that contain innovation in their titles but the really don’t give business and government a solid measurement of innovation ACTIVITY. The PDMA is studying a proposal to establish a monthly Product & Service Index (PSI) modeled after the Institute of Supply Chain Management’s Purchasing Managers’ Index (The PMI). This monthly report would tell the nation if our level innovation activity is increasing or decreasing. With this index in the news each month politicians and business leaders would be forced to deal with statistical proof a declining level of innovation activity in our nation.

The second critical area is: We are failing to innovate our manufacturing processes. We all know how high the jobless rate is and politicians decry jobs moving off-shoring but the fundamental answer to manufacturing job loss is AUTOMATION. Innovating manufacturing processes is just another name for automation and we have some of the world’s leading automation companies right here in the U.S. yet we fail to invest in automation and watch jobs go to either low cost nations like China or high productivity nations like Germany. In 2000, as reported by the Association of Manufacturing Technology (AMT), the amount of investment in new manufacturing technology was $6B. By 20009 that number had plummeted to $2B. Opening up lending for capital equipment and extending tax credits for both New Product Development and New Process Development would stimulate investment, create jobs and improve the competitiveness of the U.S.

I was asked if I thought businesses or individuals were holding back American Innovation. My answer is NO. What we are suffering from is a lack of information (Give us an Innovation Index) and too little investment in innovating our manufacturing processes (Give us Automation). These solutions will move us back to the top!

About Mark Adkins

Mark Adkins currently serves on the board of directors of the Product Development and Management Association (PDMA) and is PDMA’s Vice President of Marketing. Mark also helped found the Cincinnati Chapter of PDMA in 2000 and in 2010 helped launched the Pittsburgh Chapter of the PDMA currently serving as their president.

Mark is the founder & president of Smart Hammer Innovation a consulting business that applies Lean principles to new product and market development. Its customer base is B2B industrial firms that are seeking profitable growth through product and service innovation. In his career Mark and his teams have led development projects that have launched numerous new products with lifetime sales of over $1B.

About PDMA

The Product Development and Management Association (PDMA) is the premier global advocate for product development and management professionals. Its mission is to improve the effectiveness of individuals and organizations in product development and management. PDMA accomplishes this by providing resources for professional development, information, collaboration and promotion of new product development and management. For more information about PDMA’s 34^th Annual Global Conference on Product Innovation Management, visit http://2010conference.pdma.org, follow on Twitter @PDMAintl or connect on LinkedIn.

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