AU Blogspot

                Thanks to Amayzun for permission to use this Photo.

I’m not a regular viewer of The Apprentice TV show, but I happened to catch a recent episode where the competitive project was to develop a marketing strategy around a new line of Kodak printers.  During the briefing process, where the contestants were given a product description to base their pitch on, I was really struck by the Kodak marketing executives’ emphasis on Ink as the factor distinguishing this product in the print marketplace.  Kodak’s central message was: “Our ink is revolutionary, the best in the world, on top of that, this new printer, is half the price of our competitors, who are offering an inferior product and customer experience.”  Unless you work in the print industry or have investments in this area, it’s easy to overlook that the comparative quality and cost of ink/paper are what drives this market, not necessarily the machine itself, which is in many respects a generic shell duplicated by the leading players—give or take a couple unique features. 

With this topic top of mind, I remembered a podcast that I’d recently listened to about Hayden Hamilton, entrepreneur and founder of a printing company known as GreenPrint.  One of Hamilton’s innovative contributions to this market is software that dramatically reduces the amount of unwanted pages from the printing process; the type of waste that collectively costs corporations millions of dollars each year.  Like any great entrepreneur, Hamilton saw an opening in this waste and created his company to fill this empty space in the market.  In this podcast interview, Hamilton explains the story behind GreenPrint, one that I believe you will find very informative and motivational.  Click on the image above to listen to this great podcast.  Your comments are welcome and appreciated, so let’s hear from everyone!

We’d like to thank Betsy Flanagan and the team over at Startup Studio for this great interview!

Ryan Rode
Interactive Services Manager
Ashworth University School Of Business

Cleantech - the new buzz word which is cut across industries and geographies has always had a mystical presence in the minds of a neophyte.

So what is all the euphoria about cleantech? As the Cleantech Indices simplify cleantech as “Clean is more than green”. Clean technology, or “cleantech”, should not be confused with the terms environmental technology or green technology popularized in the 1970’s and 80’s. Cleantech is new technology and related business models offering competitive returns for investors and customers while providing solutions to global challenges. (more…)