Top 15 Women in Business 2008 – "The Innovators"

The March.April issue of PINK features the Top 15 Women in Business – "The Innovators" – PINK's exclusive list (sponsored by Ernst & Young) of the most influential women driving innovation (and revenue) in corporate America. Each day, these remarkable leaders use ideas to transform companies.

From Michelle Gass, just promoted to senior vice president of global strategy at Starbucks, to Union Pacific Railroad's Diane Duren, who developed a new train route that delivers millions in revnue annually, these women create meaningful change in their organizations – the kind that births new generations of products and has an immediate impact on the bottom line.

"The Innovators" are:
• Cathy Avgiris, Comcast
• Barbara Beck, Manpower
• Irene Chang Britt, Campbell Soup
• Laurie Brubaker, Aetna
• Diane Duren, Union Pacific Railroad
• Julie England, Texas Instruments
• Michelle Gass, Starbucks
• Mona Siu-Kan Lau, Ph.D., UBS
• Dijuana Lewis, Wellpoint
• Margery Mayer, Scholastic
• Seong Ohm, Wal-Mart
• Linda Sanford, IBM
• Nor Rae Spohn, Hewlett-Packard
• Donna Sturgess, Glaxosmithkline
• Padmasree Warrior, Cisco Systems

Methodology:
They asked for nominations from the Top 250 public companies and scoured membership lists of industry organizations and regional women's groups to find those who are known by those in the know. Then, we narrowed our list of candidates to those who we believe will soon be showing up in their companies' C-levels - women whose innovations and out-of-the-box thinking made a documented difference to their companies' profits, growth and customers.

Environmental awareness has come to the race for patent bragging rights

In January, IBM announced the creation of an Eco-Patents Commons--shared innovations geared at environmental sustainability--with the participation of Sony, Nokia, and Pitney Bowes. The launch of the Eco-Patent Commons is timed with the yearly ranking of U.S. patent awards, which gives IBM the top spot for the 15th year in a row, with 3,148 patents in 2007.The Eco-Patent Commons will start with the donation into the public domain of 31 patents that cover everything from a manufacturing process that reduces volatile compounds to a natural coagulant used to purify industrial waste water.

A Web site that hosts the patents, the patent common, will be administered by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, a Geneva-based organization devoted to promoting sustainability in business.Co-founder IBM, which has a program called Big Green Innovations, hopes to encourage innovation in areas of ecology and benefit commercially through the venture, said Dave Kappos, IBM's lead patent attorney."There's no reason that environmentally sustainable activity cannot be commercially advantageous," he said. "The patents come out of the IT industry--at least ours do--but there is cross-industry applicability."For example, communications company Nokia submitted a patent covering recycling cell phones into new electronic devices such as clocks, calculators, and remote controls.

Participants who submit patents into the Eco-Patents Commons pledge not to enforce these patents against others who use them.They benefit from the commons by being able to use other companies' patents. They also benefit from further innovations or cost reductions on their donations, Kappos said. The company hopes others will join and expand the patent pool. Kappos said part of the motivation for the creation of the patents-sharing organization is the difficulty in establishing intellectual property licensing agreements across industries. In the IT industry, cross-licensing agreements are commonplace, but in other fields, such as chemicals or energy, intellectual property tends to be hoarded, he said.

The electronics and IT industries are seeing an upswell of environmental awareness. Vendors are offering more energy-efficient products and other green technologies. But the manufacture of electronics remains energy-intensive and involves harmful chemicals. Although there are efforts to boost recycling, electronic waste is a growing problem. IBM and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development said they hope to attract innovations and address energy conservation, pollution prevention, better materials, recycling, and more efficient use of water.

The Deisel Tree: Eco-Innovation - Grow Your Own Oil

Australian farmers in the wet tropical region of North Queensland have bought over 20,000 of these so-called diesel trees. The intention is that in 15 or so years they’ll have their very own oil mine growing on their farmland.

Because, the Brazilian Copaifera langsdorfii, to use its botanical name, can be tapped not unlike a rubber tree, but instead of yielding rubbery latex it gives up a natural diesel. According to the nurseryman selling the trees, one hectare will yield about 12,000 litres annually. *

Once filtered—no complex refining required, apparently—it can be placed straight into a diesel tractor or truck. We read that a single Copaifera langsdorfii will continue to produce fuel oil for an impressive 70 years, with the only negative being that its particular form of diesel needs to be used within three months of extraction.

Innovate or Die Contest

The Aquaduct is the winning entry in the Innovate or Die contest put on by Google and Specialized. The contest challenge was to build a pedal powered machine that has environmental impact. Please see the website www.innovate-or-die.com

Obama Aligns With GW on Eco-Innovation

Well it looks like aligning oneself with GW (Garbage Warrior) may not be such an ineffective idea after all. View a clips from Garbage Warrior here.

Obama said he would use Gore to help forge a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions designed to lower pollution, however, he cautioned that such a system could mean an increase in electricity bills from power companies that rely on coal-burning, and that some of the money generated from a cap-and-trade system may be used in the beginning to help lower income or fixed income customers with those bills.

He also called on individuals to do their part to lower energy consumption. "All of us are going to have to change our habits. We are a wasteful culture," he said singling out the use of compact fluorescent light bulbs, energy efficient appliances, and unplugging power chargers when they're not in use as relatively simple solutions.

"Those kinds of simple steps, if everybody takes them, can drastically reduce our energy consumption."