May 2009

Leaders & Success

IBD´s 10 Secrets to SUccess

Investor´s Business Daily has spent years analysing leaders and successful people in all walks of life. Most have 10 traits that, when combined, can turn dreams into reality. Each day, we highlight one.

Dig Up Earthy Solutions

Don´t throw anything away. That´s sustainability in its simplest form. Experts say achieving it is an exercise in gathering new data and solving old problems. How they do it:

Go to extremes. When he took the helm of Chicago-based Intercon Solutions in 200, Brian Brundage committed the computer demanufacturing firm to zero landfill tolerance. "We take (a computer) apart by hand to all of its original components," the CEO told IBD. "We don´t shred, and we don´t resell components" such as hard drives.

Intercon´s ability to recycle a computer and make its data disappear attracts security-conscious clients like banks and government agencies. "We have a unique service that is exactly what they need," he said.

Listen to them. Customers at Cisco Systems told Brundage the environmental gold standard rating - the ISO 14001 - was a must. So he completed the tedious process of achieving it. "They´re a big companies too," Brundage said. "We´re very client-centric. We´ve kind envolved into the company our clients wanted us to evolve into."

Mind the finer points. Pennsylvania-based Nicos Polymers Group recovered and reprocessed 90 million pounds of plastic scrap for reuse by manyfacturers last year. Closing the loop on post-industrial plastics takes a high-tech approach.

"When we walk people through our plant, they invariably say, `I had no idea it was that complicated,´" CEO Kevin Cronin told IBD.

It also takes know-how on such mundance issues as minimizing the cost of tranporting tons of plastic.

"The devil´s always in the details," Cronin said. "There´s a great deal of technological and business acumen that goes into a business like this."

Teach´em. "One of the challenges we face is the lack of knowledge among our clients of what the possibilities are," Cronin said.

So Nicos Polymers Group recently formed an Innovative Sustainability Solutions division to help clients achieve environmental goals.

"The idea is to overcome the paradigms of what can and cannot be done," Cronin said. "It requires a very holistic approach."

A firm that pays to send unusable materials to landfills might discover it can spend a little less by changing its manufacturing process to make that same material recyclable.

"That´s when the economics begin to make a lot of sense," Cronin said. "If you can´t show a positive economic impact, (these projects) can become nonstarters."

Criticize by creating. Entrepreneurs who build sustainable businesses don´t just decry bad practices; they also devise better ones.

So says "Be the SOlution" author Michael Strong. He co-founded FLOW Inc. with Whole Foods Market CEO John Mackey to bring together a "tribe of people who are more focused on the entrepreneurial solutions than they are on political debate," Strong told IBD.

The organization´s members network, educate and collaborate on problems like global sustainability.

"We are seeing more crativity than ever before," Strong said. "At the end of the day, you can create a business that will change things."

Sonja Carberry