Yesterday the NY Times had an article about how "clean tech" (renewable energy, biofuels, hydrogen, etc.) is becoming popular with venture capitalists in Silicon Valley. We've talked about this before, but they have a thorough treatment of what's happened recently, mentioning groups like Energy Innovations and Nanosolar.

The most interesting part of the article to me, though, was the Times' statement that in Silicon Valley, "growing rich through doing good is considered the ideal." Wow, have we really already won the culture war? If you've read the book What the Dormouse Said: How the 60’s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry,you may think the valley's always been like that, but I'm often skeptical.

I noticed this article and blogged about it on NextBillion.net - check it out here: http://www.nextbillion.net/node/578. What's interesting to me is not only that green tech has been singled out as important, but also that the low-income markets were described as the world's "largest markets." My hunch: to succeed in profitable green tech, companies are going to have to go all the way down to the base of the economic pyramid (BOP).

Posted by: Rob Katz on June 28, 2005 10:32 AM