An environmental or social problem is really a business opportunity in disguise
By: Lauren Otis
Changing society for the better, and doing it with business savvy and entrepreneurship, is often about recognizing that an environmental or social problem is really an opportunity in disguise, and then pursuing that opportunity wherever it leads. This was the message communicated by four participants in a social entrepreneurship panel discussion.
The social entrepreneurship session was part of the 2007 annual conference on entrepreneurship organized by the Princeton Entrepreneurs’ Network, an alumni networking organization. The conference was held on June 1 at Princeton’s Friend Center.
For Bruce Fleming, Class of 1977, founder, president and chief executive officer of Canusa Corp. a diversified recycleables company, it all started in the early 1970s at Princeton when he saw that the campus recycling program had fallen apart. Blending business techniques with an environmental goal, Mr. Fleming resuscitated the campus recycling program, supplying recycleables to Garden State Paper Co., a company which was run by a Princeton alumnus, Richard Scudder, Class of 1935, which made newsprint from recycled newspapers, Mr. Fleming said.
Mr. Fleming took a job at Garden State Paper, then founded Canusa Corp. in 1981, pledging to give away 5 percent of its pre-tax profits to non-profit organizations, an easy decision to make, he joked, back when the company had no revenues or profits.
Mr. Fleming needed start-up capital for Canusa, and had almost none. He called up a former Princeton roommate who said he had $19,000. "I said that’s okay," Mr. Fleming said. Sharing his first lesson on social entrepreneurship with the audience, he said, "remember there is always a Princetonian with more capital than you and don’t be afraid to ask for it."
Canusa Corp. now operates as more of a holding company, Mr. Fleming said, investing in worthwhile business models. He cited a recent investment in a company called RecycleBank which provides shopping discounts and other financial rewards to households for recycling, with the rewards provided by big name retailers as well as local businesses.
Mr. Fleming offered five other points of advice to his audience. First, "as social entrepreneurs we need to accept small improvements, we can’t all be Bill Gates or Meg Whitman from Princeton (Ms. Whitman, Class of 1977, is president and CEO of eBay), but we can do something." Second, "you can’t do it alone, you need partners you can trust." Third, "align yourself with patient capital," that doesn’t need an immediate return. Fourth, "some people are just smarter than you are, and have better ideas, even if they didn’t go to Princeton." And, lastly, "you just have to get in the game, start it."
Mr. Fleming said he called Mr. Scudder the day before the panel talk to tell him he was going to mention him and to thank him for helping him so many years ago. "He said, ‘life is about making a difference and I am glad that I could help you,’" Mr. Fleming said.
Charles Munn, Class of 1977, chairman of Tropical Nature, a U.S.-based non-profit which conserves tropical rainforest in South America through ecotourism, was a post-doctoral researcher studying macaws in the field in Peru when he was confronted with the dilemma which led to his becoming a social entrepreneur.
South American governments were seeking to "harvest" wild animals from the Amazon rainforest for research and meat, and cut down the forest too, aided by indiginous Indians, because they saw little other economic benefit to the rainforest. Ultimately, Mr. Munn said, it became clear that the birds he studied, and their habitats were going to be destroyed his work as a researcher incapable of doing anything for them unless he came up with a novel way to preserve them. Out of this epiphany came Tropical Nature.
"My experience with rainforests is they were hot and boring," Mr. Munn said, and rainforest tourism was considered boring compared to African nature safaris and other ecotourism, because the birds and animals were smaller and harder to see, and "trophy photos" harder for tourists to obtain.
Using their scientific knowledge of the species, and partnering with indiginous Indians with their huge store of knowledge, Mr. Munn described how "we cracked the code" for various rainforest animals, enabling visitors to get close to them and making rainforest ecotourism exciting. This systematic approach entailed everything from rescuing abandoned baby’s who then would stay close by to their human surrogates for viewing, to working with native Indians to find feeding sites, even finding a rare group of Jaguars that weren’t afraid of humans and didn’t run at the sight of them.
Tropical Nature was able to position its operations and partner with governments in Peru, Equador, Bolivia and Brazil sometimes overcoming significant cultural and bureaucratic obstacles convincing them to give ecotourism a try and preserve large chunks of rainforest, Mr. Munn said.
"We discovered people want local Indians as hosts, they want them to own their lodge," he said. "Indians know where the animals are, where the fruiting trees are, but they don’t know how to turn it over to money," he said. Starting with smaller projects, which they proved succeeded and even drove "bad guy" tour operators out of business Tropical Nature was able to benefit the animals, indiginous peoples, preserve land with governments who saw that ecotourism could generate more return than harvesting the rainforest, and provided tourists with a compelling experience, Mr. Munn described.
Although many obstacles remain including getting the Spanish-speaking elite of many of the countries Tropical Nature operates in to commit to their preservation efforts, and scaling the non-profit up to a globally effective size to date, through its network of ecolodges Tropical Nature has protected over 15 million acres of Amazon rainforest, Mr. Munn said.
Also on the panel was Robert Niehaus, Class of 1977, a co-founder of venture capital firm Greenhill Capital Partners, who spoke about a program he is participating in to benefit at-risk inner city students by having those from Wall Street pay for part of their tuition to inner city parochial schools, as well as a venture capital partnership he is engaged in with Save the Children to provide business loans in Ethiopia. Alex Salzman, Class of 2007, a co-founder of Rethos.com also spoke about founding a social networking site which would serve as a global gathering point for people who where rethinking and seeking to change, fundamental viewpoints about society and the environment.

