The Green Baron: A Business Parable on Ecolution

It's not about shooting down armed opponents, but rather how managers need to be shooting down the way that companies think about the environment and profitability. We call these managers ecolutionaries.

Richard (Rich) R. Young spent 12 of his 20 years of business experience in the chemical industry. In the early 1990s, while taking a doctorate in business logistics preparing to switch to an academic career, he became interested in industrial residuals convinced that there was both an environment to be nurtured and profits to be made if firms could only move to a different way of designing, operating, measuring, and managing their processes. His work ultimately became his dissertation and earned him a grant from the National Association of Purchasing Management (now the Institute for Supply Management). Most importantly it also instilled in him a belief that sustainable processes and responsible behaviors don't cost, they pay and can become sources of competitive advantage . . . Today, Rich is an Associate Professor of Supply Chain Management at The Pennsylvania State University's Capital College in Harrisburg where he also directs the MBA program. He's a Fulbright Scholar, Senior Research Fellow of the Institute for Supply Management, Research Associate at Penn State's Center for Supply Chain Research, and a collaborator at the Center for the Advancement of Sustainable Processes and Environmental Research.