Innovation for a greener generation

Selling washing powder may not be the most obvious way to change the world, but according to Gemma Clarke, founder of Footprint International, it's a start. She hopes her brand of super-concentrated, eco-friendly washing powder will be part of a gradual revolution in shopping habits that will encourage big business to "green" their products and services.

"If big business starts to lose market share to green companies, then they will have to change their products and how they operate," says Clarke, who is selling her Footprint products online so that consumers don't have to drive to the supermarket to buy their washing powder.

"That journey to do the weekly shop is one of the biggest contributors to carbon emissions," says the Manchester Business School MBA graduate. "A lot of green consumers are interested in buying online and in bulk. It's the start of a new way of doing things."

She believes the business acumen acquired through her MBA is critical. "The only way a green business will survive and make a difference is if it is successful," she says firmly. "Yes, we're green but we can also compete with the leading brands on performance and price. That's so important if green brands are to succeed."

The need to innovate means small start-ups are ideal for launching low carbon products. "Big business might introduce a green gimmick, like cutting down on plastic bags, but a small company can be more innovative and take things further so they become completely package free," says Isobel O'Neil, a researcher at Nottingham University Business School, who is looking at what drives green entrepreneurs. "A big company can make incremental change but a small company can take a completely different approach."

This kind of thinking is ideally suited for bright MBAs with the right entrepreneurial flair and all-round business education, she says. "There's plenty of space for MBA graduates in this field because there are lots of areas that need exploring. Consumers need new green choices in all sorts of areas."

There certainly seems to be a thirst among business students to learn how environmental issues relate to the bottom line. Parag Shah, for example, set up the Green Masters Society on his arrival at Cass Business School in 2007, inviting companies to explain how they are making their businesses more sustainable.

"Immediately we had 72 members," says Shah, who used to work for a Norwegian timber firm in East Africa where he saw plenty of decision-making that pitched the environment against profit. "People are really interested in these issues and want to know how companies are incorporating them into their business models."

The great majority of MBA graduates don't set up green businesses but instead join management consultancies, investment banks and blue chip companies – the very organisations that have played a huge role in fuelling our unsustainable growth-focused, high-carbon economy.

Cathy Clonts, a recruitment consultant specialising in the oil and gas industry, sees no shortage of bright sparks wanting to join the behemoths of the old hydrocarbon economy. "Historically, this industry was a complete turn-off for people interested in the environment," she says. "But now the companies are doing things differently and investing in green energy alternatives."

Stephen Peake, who teaches climate leadership at Judge Business School in Cambridge, agrees. "The oil and gas industries have pioneered tools such as carbon footprinting, shadow carbon pricing and internal emissions trading," says Peake. "The sector has the best scenario planning skill set and one that is central to our efforts to decarbonise the planet's economy."

'We could reduce greenhouse emissions by 117 million tons'

Saïd Business School MBA graduate Hayden Hamilton, a former car industry executive, founded Oregon-based GreenPrint Technologies in 2006.

I got the idea for GreenPrint while working in India. Paper is hard to come by there and it costs two to three times what it costs in the US. If you're always getting three pages of wasted paper every time you print, because the last page is just a URL or a banner ad, then that gets really expensive.

The GreenPrint solution analyses everything sent to the printer and removes unnecessary pages. It keeps a track of the number of pages, trees, money and greenhouse emissions saved as a result.

The business is going really well. We have a licensing deal with Xerox and dozens of Fortune 500 companies have been in touch.

Their motivations are mixed – some are just interested in the cost savings, others are keen to quantify the green stuff to put into their CSR reports. It can really add up: the average cost of a wasted page is 6 cents and the average employee wastes six pages a day. If all new computers used our system, then greenhouse emissions would be reduced by over 117 million tons, the same as removing 23 million cars for a year.

The wrong approach is to do this in a guilt-trip way, persuading people to take 30 second showers and switch off all the lights. When I worked at Ford we asked people if they were interested in buying a car that had environmental benefits and 86 per cent said yes. But when we asked how much extra they would pay for a car with those benefits, it worked out at 2 per cent. There's nothing you can do in the automotive industry for that.

Green companies have to try and find clever ways of being environmentally friendly without making it more expensive, or degrading the customer experience.