Belgian business guru seeks innovation

Speaking to around 300 guests at the Blue Economy Forum, hosted by Common Wealth Biweekly magazine, Gunter Pauli said, “Taiwan needs to have the next generation (entrepreneur) of Stan Shih,” referring to the Acer Group founder who attended the forum as a panelist.

Shih, whose company grew from a US$172-million business in 1983 to a US$50 billion firm today, was the first generation of Taiwanese entrepreneurs, but there is a new way to look at business opportunities now, said Pauli, an entrepreneur himself and founder of the ZERI Foundation (Zero Emissions Research and Initiatives).

Led by Pauli, the Blue Economy began as a project under the global think tank Club of Rome aimed at finding 100 of the best nature-inspired technologies that could affect the economies of the world and create 100 million jobs within the next 10 years. To date, Pauli said he and his team have found 340 innovations that can be bundled into systems that function the way ecosystems do.

Pauli advocated the “Blue Economy” as an idea to go beyond the “Green Economy.” The green economy, he said, serves as an economic development model that stresses green energy and efficiency and preventing environmental pollution, global warming, resource depletion, and environmental degradation, but it requires companies to invest more in order to save the environment.

The blue economy tries to replace that framework by bringing innovations to the marketplace, securing the basic needs of all, and making sustainable businesses competitive, he explained.

One of the keys will be “how we rethink the traditional way of doing business, namely, innovations ... because wisdom of the past doesn't take you to the future,” he said.

Pauli said that innovations should firstly be based on physics, because basics in physics never change. They should then target blatant models of unsustainable production and consumption. Innovation should always generate multiple benefits and evolve from scarcity to abundance. Finally, he said, “Are you simply looking to reduce costs to compete against China?”

The idea of the blue economy is not difficult to understand, he said, citing an example in his Belgian company where every employee who rides a bicycle to work is paid half a euro for every kilometer. While the employees earn extra money and produce less pollution, he saves parking space and has healthier workers, Pauli said.

Another example is the innovation used in wind turbines to convert wind power to electricity, he said.

With innovation, “business opportunity is here, there and everywhere,” he said, adding that while “some dream to escape from reality, some dream to change reality.”

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