Decision Making 2.0: How Information Technology Can Help us Make Decisions Friendly to Planet, People and Profits

Do you know the environmental impact of that steak you bought at Whole Foods? Do you have any idea how much electricity your PC is using when you leave it on all night? Should you tell the grocery clerk plastic or paper? What if your cellphone could tell you the greener choice in each case? In this session we’ll discuss the decisions we make on a daily basis, either as consumers or as employees, and how IT solutions can inform those decisions. Our premise is that if you are given the right information, at the right time, in the right format, you’ll make decisions that are more socially and/or environmentally friendly. For this workshop, you won’t hear speakers talk about tech trends or consultants talk about how to make decisions; rather, you’ll be creating ideas. Come be a part of the solution – come make an impact on the future of decision making.

Net Impact Professional Summit

Business and Technology Panel

How Web 2.0 is Empowering Sutainable Business

Web 2.0 is about collaboration, sharing, and accessibility. How is this
online revolution empowering Sustainable Business? Participants will
learn how start-ups and big businesses alike are using the power of the
Web to improve their bottom lines while addressing environmental and
social justice issues. See demonstrations of cutting-edge, near-free
software that can easily be integrated into your organization to
increase collaboration while lowering your organization’s impact on
the environment.

Read more at Sustainable Enterprise 2007

An excerpt from "GREEN SEARCH ENGINE MAKES TIME.COM’s TOP 10 LIST OF NEW WEBSITES":

"People want to go green, but they often don’t know where to start or
even what questions to ask," says Joey Shepp, founder of Green Maven.
"Green Maven makes searching for all things green as easy as using
Google. If you search for socks, you get organic socks. If you search
for cars, you get hybrid cars. Our mission is to make it easy for
mainstream to go green."

January 12th, 2006 

If there’s one person who best embodied the spirit of corporate America in the 1980s – the shameless pursuit of profit and the conviction that ethics don’t apply in business – it’s Ivan Boesky. A legendary Wall Street investor, Boesky made millions trading stock on insider information before the feds caught on and
sent him, along with his trading partners, to prison. Up until the time he was convicted though, much of the business world viewed Boesky as a hero. In 1986 he was invited to speak at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business graduation ceremony, where he delivered what’s become perhaps his best-known line: "Greed is good."

To read more:  greenisgood_bayguardian_article_01-12-06

Excerpt from "Green" Means "Black", by Natasha Dalton", 
May 2006 

 "…Another example of this new type of a successful private enterprise is that of Joey Shepp. He is the founder of Earthsite.net — a company building a global network of sustainable businesses. He is also a co-founder of AloNovo.com, a “responsible shopping portal with a mission of empowering consumers to create change.” Joey has consulted many major players in the sustainable economy, including Global Exchange and Fantastic Foods.

“The old way of doing business is going extinct,” he says. “Polluting, cheating, and short-term thinking are not providing the financial returns they used to. There is a new buzz in the business world and it is sustainability. Companies like Clif Bar, Organic Valley, GE, Toyota, HP, and BP are changing the game by investing in sustainable business. When I talk about sustainable business, I mean sustainable profits—and did I mention that environmental and social values are the way to get there? I got a Green MBA to have a competitive advantage in today’s new economy…”

 November 11, 2005

In the exhibition hall, booths ranged from indigenous Amazon herbal products to fair-trade organic coffees to "green" MBA programs, such as the one offered by New College in San Francisco that promotes ecological sustainability and social justice. Participants debated political issues, lamented global warming and species die-off, and consistently returned to the nitty-gritty of solutions from political advocacy to ecologically sustainable design and business.

 To read more:  bionners_article_mentions_greenmba

January 8th, 2006 

An excerpt ftom  "M.B.A.’s With Three Bottom Lines: People, Planet and Profit," by Abby Ellin:

"…Joey Shepp, a graduate of the University of California, Santa Cruz,
received a master’s from New College last spring. He chose New College
for its smaller classes and ”an education that was more on the cutting
edge,” he says. ”None of the bigger schools had incorporated that
level of sustainability in their curriculum.” A self-described
visionary artist, entrepreneur, technologist and, yes, tree hugger, he
is now Internet marketing director of Green Festival, which organizes
marketplaces for eco-friendly entrepreneurs, and helped found a company
that designs Web sites for sustainable businesses and another that
grades corporations for their social responsibility…"

An Introduction to Ecological Design from Bachelors of the Arts Thesis

Ecological Design is born simply from the application of ecological understanding to the practice of design. A contemporary understanding of scientific ecology is rooted in the concept of interrelatedness. Because organisms evolved in relationship to one another, ecological systems are interconnected and interdependent at all scales. Seeing natural cycles in their entirety can provide profound evidence of this.