Barry Nalebuff and Seth Goldman

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In 2008 Coke paid $43 million for a 40% stake in Honest Tea and acquired the other 60% in 2011 for an undisclosed amount. The founders are still running the company and (so far) it’s stayed true to its mission.

But that’s not what today is about.

If you aren’t a reader, and even if you are, you’re probably tired of plowing though business books.

Even the good ones are often over-written; publishers want a certain number of pages to warrant the price, so there is often a lot of same thought/different words repetition, while customers’ assume there’s a direct correlation between length/weight and price.

It’s even harder to find business books that provide solid advice for startups that are focused on sustainable, environmentally friendly and socially responsible along with financial success.

Seth Goldman and Barry Nalebuff, founders of Honest Tea, are hoping to fill that gap with a 302 page comic book due out in September.

We’d like to think this isn’t your typical How I Built My Business book. For starters, it looks like a comic book. We designed the book this way because we wanted the story to come alive. You get to share in our journey, meet some colorful characters, and not take us too seriously.

That’s right, comic book style; here’s a preview of the first chapter.

Different company, different business advice, different marketing.

The pair, with a budget they did not disclose, are focusing on online and social media efforts, and have created a Web site, missioninabottle.net, where, for $25, a customer can buy a book, a signed bookplate and a T-shirt.

I haven’t read the book, but the first chapter (all of four pages) makes at least three important points painlessly in very few words. (My kind of writing!)

And skipping a few trips to Starbucks will pay for the signed book and T-shirt.

Such a deal!

Flickr image credit: Mission in a Bottle

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Today is Blog Action Day and the topic is Climate Change, so I asked Chris Blackman, a strategic consultant who specializes in finding both private and public funding for the green and clean technology sectors, to tell us about a country that has used US-invented technology and incentives to become a global solar leader.

Chris also provides compelling background on a subject that enrages me—sacrificing one limited resource for another.

From Chris…

In 1940 Russell Ohl, a scientist at Bell Labs, invented the photovoltaic cell.

So why is dark, rainy Germany a world leader in installed photovoltaic solar panels and solar manufacturing equipment instead of the US?

I work in the sector and am frankly astonished that anyone would even say the words ‘Germany’ and ‘solar power’ in the same sentence.

Germany became a solar leader by use of a feed-in-tariff. Many panelists at the AlwaysOn going green conference in San Francisco last month derided this promising incentive to encourage the adoption of clean energy technologies.

To learn more I contacted Sebastian Britting, a visiting graduate scholar at Columbia University, who will publish the results of his thesis analyzing all the economic and ecological implications of America emulating Germany’s success implementing this program.

How does a feed-in-tariff work?

Sebastian explained “the utility companies are forced through legislation to accept clean sources of energy generated by individuals, provide access points where the individual can feed the energy into the grid and pay the individual a premium for the energy they have generated.”

Germans quickly latched on to this program because it is a guaranteed source of income. This is clearly demonstrated by the year-on-year increase in solar technology equipment in German homes: 40% for the each of the last three years.

The benefits of adopting feed-in-tariffs in Germany don’t end with personal profit, “Germany created 280,000 new jobs since implementing this incentive and is today at the forefront of innovation in the solar energy industry.”

The same program that rewards customers for generating their own electricity also allows the utilities to reallocate the cost of buying it by spreading it out to all of their customers.

“That price increase was 1.38 [Euro] CENTS per kilowatt in 2008, a price increase of less than five percent.”

Stated another way, the program adds just $1.69 to the average German’s monthly electric bill. The average electricity price increases slightly for everyone but Sebastian emphasizes, “This is not a tax and spinning it as such is attempting to make a deliberate distortion.”

This price increase does not go on forever: “It is temporary and when the newly installed generators pay for themselves which is over a 20 year period, the price increase will phase itself out.”

Tellingly, 97% of all Germany’s solar power is captured using solar photovoltaic (PV) cells. PV is highly efficient under the most stressful conditions offering very little sunlight and little water.

Germany receives about 60% of the sunlight that the United States receives, yet even the brightness of a cloudy day provides enough light for the PV cells to generate electricity.

And since the only water required by PV cells is for cleaning the panels from time to time, a little rain acts as an automatic maid.

America invented this technology, so why haven’t we capitalized and profited from it?

What do you think?

Image credit: Blog Action Day

How real is green biz? We read about it all the time. Pundits debate the talk vs. the walk; CEOs worry about the “carbox” effect; and investors try to understand the impact.

Google “green business” and you get over 3 million hits and green was the primary subject at the Davos World Economic Forum this year.

“No doubt green is a central theme in Davos this year, where more than 2,500 participants from 88 countries are meeting to discuss key global issues. Some 20 sessions —many of them private—are dedicated to environmental issues. … “Evolution is not a response,” cautions Simon Mulcahy, head of information technology industries at the World Economic Forum. “Big behavioral changes need to happen now and technology is a fundamental game-changer.”

Green tech, also called clean tech, was a major subject at the Stanford Summit, too, and its increasing visibility and potential is taking a significant chunk of dollars invested.

How good will the returns be? Emanio CEO KG Charles-Harris, who attended the Summit for me, has a personal slant on the subject.

“When I co-founded HURD (the private investment vehicle of Norway’s Fred. Olsen family in alternative technologies) in Scandinavia in 1996, this was an unusual area to invest in.

Our strategy was to focus on what we perceived to become major constraints in the coming decades; clean air, clean water, cheap renewable energy and cheap protein.

Most people we interacted with, especially in the US, were incredulous that this was something we believed would provide a strong ROI. We persisted in our strategic focus and during the years I was there we had an IRR of more than a thousand percent each year.

At the time it was a well kept secret. Now, however, investing in clean tech and renewable energy is becoming so mainstream that the days of unusually high returns are over.”

Are they? As green tech goes mainstream and the market matures will the returns remain significant?

If not, will the innovators and their backers walk away from the problems?

Image credit: jsyvrsn