The worldwide environmental crisis has been growing exponentially over the past few years. We as people and hard-wired to evolve and innovate. Unfortunately, the effect we had on the environment was massive.
Changing the status quo
Now there is a need for change and we need to start bringing solutions instead of creating more problems. And what better place to start than the world of business. After all, most of the changes that affected the environment happened to facilitate industries.
Over the past few years, the concept of green entrepreneurship has emerged and it appears to be growing larger and larger. Now, a lot of people are confused by the term, seeing as simply hearing about green entrepreneurship one imagines a business that uses only recycled materials and operates its systems with the use of alternative power sources.
What is Green Entrepreneurship
And yes, although that is part of the entire concept, it is not what green entrepreneurship is all about. Green entrepreneurship covers a much bigger range of activities that go beyond, employees simply are environmentally sensitive.
As a result, if we were to define green entrepreneurship we would define it like so:
Green entrepreneurship is the activity of consciously addressing environmental and social problems and need, and coming up with brilliant innovative entrepreneurial ideas that will bring a solution to them. These ideas have a high level of risk which has a positive effect on the natural environment while at the same time, it helps maintain financial sustainability. For instance, many businesses nowadays skip paper invoices and go for paperless invoicing for the sake of green entrepreneurship and the sustainable development of their businesses.
So in other words green entrepreneurship is businesses and companies coming up with solutions that have a worldwide application and can help save the environment. At the same time, they must make sure that the solutions will not have a negative financial effect on the business.
The Green Entrepreneur
A business cannot apply a method to create a sustainable energy source if it leads to financial instability for the business itself.
Building on Green Entrepreneurship, we must also define the concept and position of a Green Entrepreneur. The person behind the scenes, the one who runs the entire enterprise.
A Green Entrepreneur is a person who starts an entrepreneurial venture that is green by design and all the products and processes that come out of that venture are also green from the moment the venture is set up.
Supporting Green Entrepreneurship
For Green Entrepreneurship to be successful as a concept, companies need to start applying the new model that will help them both promote green ventures and turn green themselves. For older companies that already have a specific way of working this might take longer to achieve.
Fundamentals will need to be changed and in most cased businesses simply don’t have the budget for it. But even if we are talking about a new venture, the capital still plays the most important role.
These days and for the years to come, European green entrepreneurs are going to receive the support they need. The European Union is very serious regarding the matter of sustainability and turning to environmentally friendly solutions to problems.
With actions like the European Green Deal, we now notice that more and more budget is being allocated to programmes that promote environmentally friendly actions, leading to a series of “investments that will help both create new green enterprises as well as change current policies for old businesses.
Getting into Green Entrepreneurship
We could easily say that Green Entrepreneurship is now easier than ever. Considering not only the environmental problem but the pandemic crisis as well, we notice that people are more inclined towards social and green enterprises.
At the end of the day, a young entrepreneur needs to be able to answer the question, “how does my company help solve environmental and social problems?”. And there are many ways to do that. All you need to do is to let creativity and innovation be combined.
The good thing about modern green entrepreneurship is the fact that with today’s technology, the range of potential ideas has grown. People can now use new and innovative technologies to come up with new models that will save energy, solve existing problems, and of course predict future issues that might occur.
Education is important
Once again we see that education is important and that it can be a great way to enhance practices and activities. Entrepreneurs who are aiming at becoming green entrepreneurs will need to learn about all current issues and technologies that might help solve them. They will need to identify the nature of their business and come up with activities focused on their expertise.
Most importantly Green Entrepreneurship will need to have a long-term impact. Creating a solution to a problem that will simply not be applicable in the next few years is not an option when we are talking about sustainable development and perhaps the enhancement and alteration of current practices.
Green Entrepreneurship and sustainable development
Most of the entrepreneurs and business owners of today are trying to take things one step further and surpass the concept of sustainable development. Sustainable development is all about keeping things steade. We must make sure that today’s activities are not affecting the environment and, where it is possible, to go back to a previous stage where there was no danger.
However, the world is changing and many consider sustainability not to be the objective. On the contrary, they believe that all future developments and improvements will need to focus on changing practices and alterating methods instead of going back to the old ways.
This is of course something that could have a great effect on Green Entrepreneurship. At the moment, however, entrepreneurs still appear to be following the sustainable development concept for green entrepreneurship. It is only with measurable results that we will understand which method is the best and how Green Entrepreneurship will change in the years to come.
