» Strategies for the Green Economy: Opportunities and Challenges in the New World of Business

Strategies for the Green Economy: Opportunities and Challenges in the New World of Business Reviews

Customer Rating:
Summary: If you want just one green business book...
Comment: If you want to understand the challenges facing companies trying to sort out what it means to be "green" as they attempt to make sense of the competitive threats and opportunities at the intersection of business and the environment, Joel Makower's "Strategies for the Green Economy" is the right place to start. In this highly readable and engaging book, Joel chooses to not push an agenda but instead to expose just how difficult it is for businesses to devise a green strategy and execute against it. Rather than stepping away from the challenges, the book provides a foundation from which every business can consider their strategy and what it would mean for them to be green. With a wide array of examples from diverse industries, there's something for everyone to take away. If you're looking for an effective way to start the green dialogue at your company, this is a great place to start.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Succinct, useful, and sharp
Comment: Makower continues his leadership in the green business community with a terrific contribution in "Strategies". What I like best about Makower is his ability to make sustainability real and relevant. Real world examples from large companies help to elucidate some of the sustainability strategies, and why many companies are pursuing them, that help companies save money while doing well by the ecosystem at large.

One of the most insightful and helpful contributions Makower makes in this book is his exploration of the green consumer. My feeling is that this has been one of the missing links for many companies in terms of going green. The green consumer segment, as Makower describes it, is incredibly diverse, with varying levels of commitment. Makower makes it easy for CEO's and middle managers alike to understand this growing, powerful, and sought-after target market. The group is well-connected, intelligent, skeptical, and highly loyal to their brands once their trust has been earned. Makower gives golden advice in terms of soliciting to this market but also stern warning against the types of activities that can alienate this group.

Makower is brilliant and shows it throughout the book.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Guru's insights provide best guide yet for green biz strategies
Comment: With more than a dozen previous books, including "The Green Consumer", already on corporate and small-business bookshelves, Joel Makower has become a master green business analyst. This book draws on his knowledge and analytical skills, with market research assist from Cara Pike, and his talent for clear writing to provide business executives a set of insights they need in planning green strategies.
Makower came onto the scene at about the same time that business was being shocked into dealing with stratospheric ozone damage from CFC emissions, and he has come to know the movers and shakers from all the communities engaged in greening over the years. This book looks forward, to show why corporate greening will endure (even if media's attention wanes), citing climate change as a major spur. He notes a parallel shift: the environmental movement morphing into the climate movement and business coping with carbon constraint linked to climate change.
Problems for greening companies include a lack of standards by which to judge "how good is good enough", leaving the bar free to drift higher; an escalating investor intensity for companies to acknowledge, reduce and report on environmental risks (which I would connect with corporate governance influenced by climate change activism); and the erosion of "sustainability" as a green leadership characteristic.
As he has done in his Greenbiz.com commentaries, Makower makes business choices easy to grasp. On energy use and climate change, he makes it simple: reduce the amount of energy used, buy more renewable-source energy, and remedy climate impact of even the renewables by moves such as carbon offsets.
Business opportunity -- starting with GE's "green is green" -- and communications are focused through the perspectives of context, relevance and good, plain talk. Easy to read, well organized, with nearly 40 short chapters, this is Makower's best book yet for corporate C-suite green strategists.

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