09 Apr 2013
by Joseph B. Lassiter III and James McQuade
C12 aimed to build not only a company, but an entire industry around carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). "You change the world by building a market, and you build a market by building a profitable company that other people copy," said Dawe, C12 Energy's CEO. "In the energy business, you build a company one project at a time. Moving forward with this first project is where we hope to begin to change the world." Read more
15 Feb 2011
by Joseph B. Lassiter III, James Thomas Corcoran, Max Gazor, Dylan Hogarty and Alexander H. Somers, Jr.
The market for electricity on the Fox Islands of North Haven and Vinalhaven, Maine is unique and costly for residents. Historically, electricity prices on the islands had been three times the national average because of the high cost of importing electricity via an underwater cable and maintaining the distribution network on the islands. George Baker, a professor at Harvard Business School, decided to lower the energy costs of the island's residents with wind power. Read more
04 Feb 2011
by Joseph B. Lassiter III and David Kiron
One day during the summer of 2008, Paul Maeder, co-founder and general partner of Highland Capital Partners (HCP), was walking with his wife around Reykjavik, Iceland, marveling at how clean the city felt and at the widespread use of naturally occurring geothermal energy to power everything from trams to buildings. "They don't treat their air and water like an open sewer," Maeder thought. "This is the way people need to live and this is the way people are going to have to start living in 10 or 20 years." To his wife, Maeder said aloud, "I think Highland should revisit the idea of investing in cleantech." Read more
10 Nov 2010
by Lynda M. Applegate, Kaitlyn Lyons and Scott Prozeller
The Ze-gen case covers the first five years in the life of a clean-tech start-up. Ze-gen had developed an innovative technology that converted solid waste into synthesis gas (called syngas). This technology was in testing at the company's pilot plant, built next to the New Bedford, Massachusetts landfill. By summer 2010, Davis's team was poised to take the next big step in building a successful clean-tech company. It was time to take the company's technology to market, identify customers willing to pay, and scale the business for commercial success. Read more
16 Sep 2010
by Michael W. Toffel and Aldo Sesia
Genzyme Corporation is in the midst of planning its new corporate headquarters, which incorporates many innovative green building features. After learning that the building as planned would likely earn a LEED Silver rating, an intermediate score in the LEED green building rating scheme, the CEO charged the building team with exploring opportunities that would enable the building to earn the highest rating, LEED Platinum. Five additional green building features are described, and students are asked to analyze and recommend which, if any, of these features to pursue based on their cost, likelihood of earning LEED credits, and their influence on the building's environmental performance. Read more
11 Aug 2010
by Joseph B. Lassiter III, Thomas J. Steenburgh and Lauren Barley
Brent Constantz, founder, CEO, and president of Calera Corporation, felt a surge of optimism as he gazed at the recently commissioned prototype flue gas processing line at Calera's R&D facility in Moss Landing, California. It was late May 2009, and Calera was an early-stage venture-backed company headquartered in Los Gatos, California with a promising vision to reverse global warming and ocean acidification by adapting one of nature's oldest processes: carbonate mineralization. Read more
22 Mar 2010
by Robert G. Eccles, Amy C. Edmondson, Susan Thyne and Tiona Zuzul
Living PlanIT is a start-up company that has developed a new, innovative business model for sustainable urbanization. This model reflects the software and technology backgrounds of its founders, Steve Lewis and Malcolm Hutchinson, and is in vivid contrast to other models for green or smart cities that are variations on a massive real estate development project. The main economic engine driving Living PlanIT's model is a partner channel strategy adopted from the high technology industry. The case shows how the Living PlanIT business model has evolved from the original vision of Lewis and Hutchinson to radically transform the construction industry to a go-to-market partnership model using the real estate as a "showroom" for evolving sustainable urban technology—a $3 trillion global market over the next 20 years. Living PlanIT is developing its first project, a new city called PlanIT Valley, outside of Porto, Portugal. The company has clarified its vision and is moving into the implementation phase, which involves fundraising, signing up channel partners, and negotiating various issues with the Portuguese government for its pilot project. Success in PlanIT Valley will translate into a strong market position as global population and demand for new cities increases, particularly in developing countries such as China and India. Read more
07 Apr 2009
by Joseph B. Lassiter III and David Kiron
On August 1, 2007, 61-year-old Jan-Olaf Willums' plane was flying along the Greenland coastline on his way back to Norway after intense discussions with several prominent U.S. venture capital investors, among them Kleiner Perkins and Rockport Capital Partners, about investing in a plan to accelerate his company's entry into the North American market. A successful engineer, entrepreneur, and sustainable development champion, Willums was CEO of Think Global AS (TH!NK), a privately held Norwegian maker of electric vehicles (EVs). Having already raised $85 million in venture backing, TH!NK was just a few months away from the broad European launch of its line of EVs, the first commercially available, highway-safe cars in the world that produced zero greenhouse emissions. Read more
30 Jun 2008
by Christopher A. Bartlett, Brian J. Hall and Nicole Bennett
In September 2003, Jeff Immelt challenged the business leaders at GE to come up with "Imagination Breakthroughs," innovative new projects that would serve as the centerpiece of GE's organic growth initiative. Follows the company as these changes are driven through the business units, focusing on GE Transportation as it launches a series of groundbreaking, green products -from the Evolution Locomotive to the Hybrid Locomotive. The growth process transforms the culture within GE Transportation, leading to a redefinition of the marketing role, the implementation of a "growth leader" profile and new decision-making processes to encourage innovation and risk. Finally, presents a critical decision point, as Transportation executives must decide whether or not to support the high-risk Hybrid Locomotive project. Read more
07 Dec 2006
by Forest L. Reinhardt, Dennis A. Yao and Masako Egawa
In 1995, Hiroshi Okuda, president of Toyota Motor Corp., considers whether to push for a more aggressive launch of the Toyota Prius--an automobile that incorporates Toyota's new and technically advanced hybrid power train. This launch decision allows discussion of the importance of the Prius in Toyota's overall product strategy and explores issues ranging from market structure to competitive advantage and competitive dynamics. Read more
All Cleantech publications
01 Jan 2012
by Robert G. Eccles, Annissa Alusi, Amy C. Edmondson and Tiona Zuzul
Two trends are likely to define the 21st century: threats to the sustainability of the natural environment and dramatic increases in urbanization. This paper reviews the goals, business models, and partnerships involved in eight early "ecocity" projects to begin to identify success factors in this emerging industry. Ecocities, for the most part, are viewed as a means of mitigating threats to the natural environment while creating urban living capacity by combining low carbon and resource-efficient development with the use of information and communication technologies to better manage complex urban systems. Read more
01 Mar 2011
by Tiona Zuzul and Amy C. Edmondson
This paper explores how entrepreneurs grow a new business in a nascent industry. Through a longitudinal, qualitative study of a new company in the nascent smart cities industry, we examine how company leaders grew a new venture while facing the ambiguity inherent in the very early phases of a new industry. We identify two distinct essential journeys that enabled the company to grow: an internal journey focused on developing and refining a business model and an external journey focused on legitimating both the firm and its growing industry. Our study illuminates the activities entrepreneurs undertake in pursuing these interconnected journeys. We also show how externally and internally oriented activities can interfere with each other. Not only do they require different skills and approaches, but successfully pursuing one can impair an entrepreneur's ability to manage the other. Pursuing both journeys simultaneously is thus even more challenging than the challenges considered separately would imply. We argue that growth in a new industry may require skillful attention to both journeys while also managing their problematic interactions. Our findings contribute to research on entrepreneurship in nascent industries and suggest directions for future research. Read more
15 Feb 2011
by Joseph B. Lassiter III and Evan Richardson
Fox Island Wind Cooperative faces criticism from local residents. Read more
01 Dec 2010
by Annissa Alusi, Robert G. Eccles, Amy C. Edmondson and Tiona Zuzul
Two trends are likely to define the 21st century: threats to the sustainability of the natural environment and dramatic increases in urbanization. This paper reviews the goals, business models, and partnerships involved in eight early "ecocity" projects to begin to identify success factors in this emerging industry. Ecocities, for the most part, are viewed as a means of mitigating threats to the natural environment while creating urban living capacity, by combining low carbon and resource-efficient development with the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) to better manage complex urban systems. Read more
16 Dec 2009
by Michael W. Toffel and Aldo Sesia
Genzyme Corporation is in the midst of planning its new corporate headquarters, which incorporates many innovative green building features. After learning that the building as planned would likely earn a LEED Silver rating, an intermediate score in the LEED green building rating scheme, the CEO charged the building team with exploring opportunities that would enable the building to earn the highest rating, LEED Platinum. Five additional green building features are described, and students are asked to analyze and recommend which, if any, of these features to pursue based on their cost, likelihood of earning LEED credits, and their influence on the building's environmental performance. Read more
16 Dec 2009
by Michael W. Toffel and Aldo Sesia
Genzyme Corporation is in the midst of planning its new corporate headquarters, which incorporates many innovative green building features. After learning that the building as planned would likely earn a LEED Silver rating, an intermediate score in the LEED green building rating scheme, the CEO charged the building team with exploring opportunities that would enable the building to earn the highest rating, LEED Platinum. Five additional green building features are described, and students are asked to analyze and recommend which, if any, of these features to pursue based on their cost, likelihood of earning LEED credits, and their influence on the building's environmental performance. Read more
All Cleantech publications