If you want to become an entrepreneur, don’t start with a business plan. You don’t need experience or money either, according to Belgian entrepreneur Gunter Pauli, who has set up
10 companies. What you need is an open mind. Also handy is an eye toward what is locally available, like waste you can turn into something else. During this three-session online course, Pauli will share his contagious enthusiasm about entrepreneurship; tell stories of people who started their own companies without experience, money or business plans; and offer lots of practical advice about how you can become part of this revolution.
10 companies. What you need is an open mind. Also handy is an eye toward what is locally available, like waste you can turn into something else. During this three-session online course, Pauli will share his contagious enthusiasm about entrepreneurship; tell stories of people who started their own companies without experience, money or business plans; and offer lots of practical advice about how you can become part of this revolution.
Why You Should Register for this Course
Belgian entrepreneur Gunter Pauli has a simple cure for the unemployment ravaging much of the Western world. He invites you to start your own company—without a business plan, money or experience. “If you don’t have money or experience, use what you have locally available,” he says. His example: Ninety-nine percent of the coffee bean goes to waste during the coffee-making process. But you can grow mushrooms on that waste and generate revenue by selling the protein-rich fungi— and whatever is left after the harvest makes excellent animal feed.
Sixteen thousand people are now creating their livelihoods by growing mushrooms on coffee pulp after Pauli started promoting this idea through his foundation, Zero Emissions Research and Initiatives (ZERI), and his book, The Blue Economy: 10 Years, 100 Innovations, 100 Million Jobs. In the blue economy, sustainability is the result of a production process that is just as integrated as an ecosystem. And the use of raw materials is avoided whenever possible, thanks to innovations based on nature. We interviewed Gunter Pauli about the blue economy; read the interview here.
In an upcoming article in the March/April issue of The Intelligent Optimist, Pauli says, “The greatest missing link in entrepreneurs today is that it's someone who focusses on doing things”
In my way of working on entrepreneurship, you are not permitted to write a business plan. If we ask people to write business plans, we are not going to get the real innovations we need. Real innovations are done by doing.” Pauli believes that in the blue economy, innovative business models are capable of bringing competitive products and services to the market, responding to basic needs while building social capital and enhancing mindful living in harmony with nature’s evolutionary path. Pauli has 100 examples of innovative business models based on the inventiveness of nature; read them here.
This course will help you find your role in the blue economy and in creating the innovative companies Pauli is talking about. You don’t need money or experience to take part in this course. All you need is the willingness to look at things from a fresh perspective. In this course, he will share stories of people who started their own companies without experience, money or business plans and offer practical advice about how you can become part of this entrepreneurial revolution by using the resources available in your location.
Who should take part?
- - Everyone looking for new opportunities in life
- - Everyone thinking about starting a company without money or experience
- - Everyone interested in the innovative business models Gunter Pauli presents in his book, The Blue Economy: 10 Years, 100 Innovations, 100 Million Jobs.
- - All people interested in taking the green economy one step further through entrepreneurship
- - Readers of The Intelligent Optimist
About Gunter Pauli
Gunter Pauli was born in Antwerp, Belgium. He received his masters in business administration from INSEAD at Fontainebleau, France. He was the founder and Chairman of PPA Holding; the founder and CEO of the European Service Industries Forum; the secretary general of the European Business Press Federation (UPEFE), the founder and president of the Foundation Mozarteum Belgicum; the chairperson and president of Ecover; and the advisor to the rector of United Nations University in Tokyo, Japan.
Under Pauli’s leadership, Ecover pioneered an ecological factory in 1992. He founded Zero Emissions Research and Initiatives at United Nations University and subsequently established The Global ZERI Network as a foundation, redesigning production and consumption into clusters of industries inspired by natural systems.
Pauli is dedicated to designing and implementing a society and industries that respond to people’s needs using what is locally available. His visionary approach supported by dozens of projects on the ground landed him an invitation to present at the World Expo 2000 in Germany, where he constructed the largest bamboo pavilion in modern days to present breakthrough initiatives. It became the most popular pavilion at the expo, hosting 6.4 million visitors.
He has been a visiting lecturer and a professor at universities in on all continents and a member of the board of NGOs and private companies in Asia, the U.S. and Latin America. Since 2009, he has taken responsibility for the design of an economic development concept based on GNH (Gross National Happiness) as part of his advisory role in designing an economic development strategy for Bhutan.
Pauli has published 19 books printed in 30 languages and 36 fables that bring science and emotions to children that have a worldwide circulation of 17 million copies. One such fable, “The Strongest Tree,” is available in more than 100 languages. Fluent in seven languages and a resident of four continents at one time or another, Pauli is an authentic world citizen.
About The Blue Economy
"The world has been wracked by food, fuel, environmental, financial and economic crises. Ecosystem and biodiversity loss has led to an emerging climate crisis and a looming natural-resource calamity. A blue economy, able to deal systematically with these many challenges, and ready to seize the manifest multiple opportunities, is now essential." --Achim Steiner, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme
"The blue economy fosters our transition from a product-based economy to a system-based economy. Such a cultural leap requires all of us to see—and move beyond—the connections that have gone into an obvious core business strategy subject to market tyranny." --Dr. Catia Bastioli, Chief Executive Officer at Novamont S.p.a, European Inventor of the Year 2007
"Our current economic crisis is also a crisis of ethics and values that has led to the enrichment of a few and the disempowerment of many. The blue economy advocates for a new economy, one led by innovation and creativity to cultivate the next generation of social entrepreneurship. We are in need of such an economy and no one is better placed than Gunter Pauli to offer this to the world." --Wendy Luhabe, Chancellor of the University of Johannesburg, Chair of the Industrial Development Corporation of South Africa
"Nature holds all our solutions. Gunter Pauli is a visionary entrepreneur who is able to help us create a blue economy based on respecting the Earth's ecosystems and humankind." --Christian Courtin-Clarins, Chairperson of Clarins
"The Blue Economy is exactly the kind of tool we need to help us repair our broken economy and create a more sustainable model. The new ideas and innovative thinking compiled here give us exciting new options about how to transform our economy so that it can generate new options about how to transform our economy so that it generate new jobs and sustain healthy, happy communities far into the future." --Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, CEO of Green For All
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