Venture Capital has got the clean tech message. Companies understand the value of sustainability. So why do big institutional investors still need convincing?

8th June 2009
We quiz the co-founder of Lastminute.com

Why downturns are good times to build a start-up.
Rewind to 1976. The economy is struggling from the recent oil crisis and stock market crash. In Silicon Valley California, the founders of Apple Computer sold a grand total of 200 computers to hobbyists. A year later, Apple executives shop their typewritten 36 page business plan to investors, believing the future home PC market would someday eclipse “programmable calculators”. Three years later, Apple caught the front of the PC wave, outdistanced larger players, and helped create the PC industry we know today.

Niels Billou, Assistant Professor, ESMT reports.
The global economy continues to shed jobs at an astonishing rate – the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Global Employment Trends 2009 report estimates an increase in the global unemployed in the range of 18 to 30 million people by the end of 2009, with more than 50 million forecasted to lose their jobs in a worst case scenario. As governments around the globe scramble to find ways to deal with the economic crisis, the burning question becomes: how best to stem, and ultimately reverse, the rising tide of unemployment?