The Kaufman Foundation’s passion and mission gives life to entrepreneurial thoughts and innovation.
What you’ll learn with some of my thoughts:
1. The age of entrepreneurs is changing.
2. Venture Capital is necessary.
3. Business start-ups spark new economic growth.
4. New firms revive economies in most instances.
5. Most Congressman just don’t “get it”.
6. Innovators change economies.
7. You may be one of many entrepreneurs who sprouts the BIG idea in a small place.
8. All economics is local. Where you live is where you spend your time and money.
9. All economics is global. An entrepreneur in Seoul or Yangshuo (Guangxi), China may change your life.
10. Your ideas matter. What you discard as worthless may become the leading innovation of all time. Either you graspe the moment, or someone will adhere to the idea. Read Russell Conwell’s Acres of Diamonds.
Whoever told us that getting what we want, no matter what the cost, rewards us with profits?
What presumptions did we assume during the Industrial Revolution?
Did someone say the earth has a voracious appetite for our refuse without choking?
Paul Hawkens contradicts our presumptions, assumptions, and earth-born arrogance by recognizing an eternal premise: the earth lives, and we have no right, in the name of profits, to destroy the land.
Hawkens, (read The Ecology of Commerce) taught Ray Anderson that sustaining the earth is consistent with making profits. You can treat your customer with high regard, make decorative carpets with sustainable characteristics, offer free recycling of what you make, while making profits.
Ray Anderson is the founder of Interface, the company that makes those adorable Flor carpet tiles (as well as lots of less whizzy but equally useful flooring and fabric). He was a serious carpet guy, focused on building his company and making great products. Then he read Paul Hawken’s book The Ecology of Commerce. Something clicked: with his company’s global reach and manufacturing footprint, he was in a position to do something very real, very important, in building a sustainable world.
