Andrew Winston over at Eco-Advantage asks a very important question: how to think about the environment as a business opportunity. Is it a market like any other…one you can “size” by revenues, or profile the competitors? Or is it an idea, a theme shaping business?
Take another ‘market’/business changing theme: information technology. I can size the market for Internet or software companies. But does that give a sense of the role of info-tech in our economy? After all, FedEx is arguably one of the most successful implementations of info-tech thinking ever. Everyone uses info-tech in some way.
I think “environment” is quickly becoming something thematic: a way of thinking about how business is conducted at a fundamental level…not a particular market called “eco-products” or “greening the supply chain,” but all products and all supply chains.
In the near future, there is no “eco-product,” there’s just product.
It’s a paradigm shift like we’ve never seen. It sounds like hyperbole, but it’s seeming more and more real every day.
This is important to understand because even though you will have individual markets for eco-services, eco-products which are new and create a new market there is this theme of “green” which needs to be part of each and every market.
