Ross is #1 in US in Environmental and Social Issues and #1 in Leadership Development

April LaCroix

By April LaCroix, Erb MBA/MS student, class of 2012.

As a student in the Erb Institute, I have the privilege of experiencing first-hand how my fellow students and professors are at the cutting-edge of sustainability; lunch time conversations frequently circulate around topics such as the latest in financing carbon offset projects or a new social enterprise opportunity. Recently, it has been rewarding to see the accomplishments of our “Erbers” and the communities we are involved in recognized outside of Ann Arbor.

The Stephen M. Ross School of Business has received two significant accolades in as many weeks: Leadership Excellence magazine has chosen the school as its top pick for 2009 Best in Leadership Development and the Aspen Institute’s Beyond Grey Pinstripes survey ranks the Ross MBA program no. 2 in the world (no. 1 in the US) for integrating environmental, ethical and social issues. (See http://www.bus.umich.edu/ for more information.)

Compassionate Capitalism: Serving the Poor Profitably with David Green

Tina Tam

By Tina Tam, Erb MBA/MS student, class of 2011.

An Ypsilanti native who now lives in Berkeley with his family, David Green’s warm and approachable style made it easier to picture him as your friendly, lawn-mowing neighbor than a legendary social entrepreneur who has impacted the lives of millions.

Green is best known for making healthcare affordable for the poor by significantly reducing the manufacturing costs of medical technologies. Green is an Ashoka Fellow and VP, a MacArthur Fellow, and a globally recognized leading social entrepreneur. A University of Michigan alum, he came to Ann Arbor to receive his well-deserved Alumni Humanitarian Service Award a few weeks ago. Although his visit was short, he graciously squeezed in a breakfast with a small group of students through the Ross Emerging Markets Club. Among those inspired by Green were several Erb students in attendance.

How Newsweek’s Green Rankings Could Be More Effective

Dautremont- Smith

By Julian Dautremont-Smith, Erb MBA/MS student, class of 2012.

This blog entry is cross-posted on Triple Pundit.

Last week, Newsweek released its first “Green Rankings,” which ranked the 500 largest U.S. companies on environmental performance.

The rankings have been welcomed by many the sustainability community, and certainly, there is a lot to like about them.  They provide a reasonably objective tool to inform to inform purchasing and investment decisions by consumers and investors.  Similarly, they enable companies to compare themselves with others in the same industry, or even in other industries.  This can stimulate competition among companies to improve their environmental performance and thereby improve their relative standing.  More generally, the rankings help keep sustainability on the minds of business leaders and the public.

Are for-profit strategies appropriate for the social sector?

Justin Adams

By Justin Adams, Erb MBA/MS student, class of 2011.

This blog entry originally appeared on the AshokaTECH Technology/Invention blog.

“Freemium is the first business model of the 21st century,” says Wired Magazine’s editor Chris Anderson.

Free + Premium = Freemium

The idea behind the Freemium model is to give something away in order to sell something else. Many of the Web’s best services, including Pandora , Dropbox, and LinkedIn, use this business model. The basic service is free, but if you want to get rid of the ads in Pandora or get more storage capacity from Dropbox or connect to more people through LinkedIn, you have to pay for it; otherwise you can continue to use the service for free.

In most cases, about 90% of customers don’t pay for these Freemium services. I’ve been using Flickr for years to share pictures and have never paid them for the value they’re providing me. Nor have I had to endure a single advertisement. Companies can afford to do this, Anderson argues in his book Free: The Future of a Radical Price, because the economics of bits are radically different than those of atoms. Things made from atoms tend to get more expensive over time while things made from bits get less expensive over time.

Moore’s Law + Metcalfe’s Law

The engine behind this economic transformation is Moore’s Law. For more than a century, the ability to process information has been growing exponentially. On average, the price of transistors drops by 50% every 18 months, the price of digital storage drops by 50% every 14 months, and the price of bandwidth drops by 50% every 12 months. In practical terms, this means is that every year it costs YouTube 50% less to store and distribute digital video.

How to Harvest Savings by Greening Leases

by Hunt Briggs,  Erb MBA/MS Class of 2011

Hunt Briggs

This story is cross posted on the Environmental Defense Fund and Green Biz Blogs.

A few weeks ago I wrote about a growing trend among real estate owners  to create more energy efficient facilities. In a similar way, an increasing number of tenants are looking for ways to drive down operating costs where possible. For example, here at Biltmore Farms, we have a specific tenant in Biltmore Park that holds environmental stewardship as a core company value. As a property manager, what can we do to help and encourage tenants to exercise that shared principle?

Green leasing is becoming more popular in real estate these days as building owners and tenants find themselves codependent when it comes to reducing consumption.

Leasing Strategies
The property owner seeking more efficient buildings will need to be creative in crafting leasing agreements. For the tenant, aside from the obvious physical attributes of an available space, the two most important cost factors are: a) the monthly rent per square foot, which is determined by the class rating of the space and the local competition for that class and b) the estimated monthly operating expense charge.

The Carbon Convergence: Lessons from energy efficiency projects in West Africa

Amrita Vijay Kimar

By Amrita Kumar, Erb MBA/MS student, class of 2011

An  original (longer) version of this post appears on the E+Co- Energy through Enterprise Blog site.

•    Do carbon-offset projects actually make good on the environmental benefits that they promise to deliver and does the resulting carbon revenue actually benefit local economies?

•    Does carbon finance have a role in the development sector; as the engine of growth for small and growing social businesses?

•    How does one operate a social enterprise that delivers triple bottom line results in West Africa?

•    Can energy efficient cook stoves slow deforestation and benefit the poor at the same time?

Tasked with the challenge of addressing ‘barriers to scale’ in the efficient cook stove sector in Western Africa, these were the questions that I found myself addressing during my summer internship with E+CO. (www.eandco.net) For three months I was happily entangled in a complex web that encompassed issues that converged around rural energy efficiency, business strategy and carbon finance. Here are some thought stirrers and questions to ponder over:

Learning from “The Cove”

The Cove

By Justin Adams, Erb MBA/MS student, class of 2011.

This blog entry is crossed listed on the Blue Ocean Institute’s blog.

“The illiterate of the 21st century won’t be those that cannot read or write,” says my favorite futurist Alvin Toffler, “but those that cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” The process of learning, unlearning and relearning involves neuroplasticity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity), the ability of our brains to make and unmake connections between neurons, to alter the strength of those connections, and even to grow new neurons to support new kinds of connections.

A Dollar Today: The Advantages of Building in Energy Controls

Hunt Briggs

By Hunt Briggs, Erb MBA/MS student, class of 2011.

This Blog entry is cross listed in the Environmental Defense Fund Innovation Exchange Blog.

I’ve worked with Biltmore Farms in Asheville, NC this summer, deciphering energy bills, tracking power demand trends and seeking cost-effective ways for the operations team to boost efficiency in their building portfolio.

Biltmore Farms is a residential and commercial community development company that is motivated to find new ways to keep quality high and costs low. In addition to the additional merits of curbing greenhouse gas emissions, energy management can prove to be a great way to control costs and raise a property’s value.

Exploring Soil Carbon

By Katherine O’Hare, Erb MBA/MS student, class of 2011.

This article is cross listed in the Sustainable Food Lab Newsletter.

Never underestimate the power of soil. I learned this lesson while accompanying Steven Apfelbaum from Applied Ecological Services and Peter Donavan of Managing Wholes throughout the West collecting soil samples in order to baseline the soil carbon content of different farms and ranches.  Soil is the second largest store of carbon on earth (after oceans) which gives it a large importance in the efforts to mitigate climate change. Soil carbon also has other benefits from improved water filtration and retention capacity to better nutrient retention and more- by changing to “sustainable agriculture techniques” such as no-till, direct seeding and cover cropping, farmers can purposefully store more carbon in soil and sell it in the form of offsets. However, two important questions remain unresolved and will determine the future of soil carbon sequestration in carbon markets – first, how much can these practices actually sequester on a farm, and, how do you measure it?

Driving Mobile Activism Adoption

Justin Adams

By Justin Adams, Erb MBA/MS student, class of 2011.

How can social entrepreneurs drive the adoption of their mobile activism tools? Participants in Ashoka’s Social Entrepreneurship Twitter chat identified several key themes. Broadly speaking, the key drivers of adoption fall into three categories: design, distribution and context.

Product Design
All forms of entrepreneurship depend on finding an unmet need and successfully satisfying it. @metameerkat suggested that involving beneficiaries in the design process will help to increase subsequent adoption. I found that to be true when I designed a web application for Baxter Healthcare. By getting out into the field and talking directly to hemophilia patients, their caregivers, and their healthcare providers, I discovered that the patients and caregivers wanted an easy way to enter repetitive treatment information, while doctors wanted reliable diagnostic data. Fortunately, our development team was able to create a solution that met both needs and led to increased customer satisfaction.