Generating Profit from Becoming Green: the Thomas Friedman Prescription. (November 7,2007)

The New York Times' columnist, Thomas Friedman writing from New Delhi reminds his readers today of India's role in laying the Y2K menace (remember the millennium bug).

"[T]he only country that had enough software programmers to adjust all these computers so they wouldn’t go haywire, and do it at a reasonable price, was India. And remember that it was this huge operation that launched the Indian outsourcing industry...

'...there is an even bigger opportunity for India than Y2K waiting around the corner. I call it 'E2K.'

"E2K stands, in my mind, for all the energy programming and monitoring that thousands of global companies are going to be undertaking in the early 21st century to either become carbon neutral or far more energy efficient than they are today. India is poised to get a lot of this work."

Mr Friedman goes on to point out that with increasing pressure, legislative and otherwise, for industries to reduce their deleterious effects on the environment there is going to be

"...the next big global business transformation. And it’s going to require tons of software, programming and back-room management to measure each company’s carbon footprint and then monitor the various emissions-reduction and offsetting measures on an ongoing basis. Guess who’s got the low-cost brainpower to do all that?"

Nandan Nilekani, the co-chairman of Infosys Technologies, one of India’s premier outsourcing companies says: "What did Y2K do?", and then answered his rhetorical question, "It was a deadline imposed by the calendar, and therefore it had a huge ability to concentrate the mind. It became a drop-dead date for everyone. Making your company carbon neutral is not a date, but it is an inevitability."

And as Mr Friedman says while some companies just did the minimum of reprogramming to keep the third millennium at bay others took the opportunity to update, upgrade their software in order to increase the efficiency of their IT sector and increase profits by entering the world of "data mining and using better information to cross-sell products, reduce cycle times for introducing new services and to manage inventories more efficiently."

Now he reports the "key to winning E2K business for the Indian outsourcing firms, said Mr. Nilekani, will be showing big global companies, like a Dell, how becoming more energy efficient or carbon neutral doesn’t just have to be a new cost they assume to improve their brand or satisfy regulators, but can actually be a strategic move that makes money and gives them an edge on the competition."

The idea is to work to being one of the first kids on the block to use the pressure for becoming less noxious to become profitably more energy, as well as more "materially, efficient".

“[T]o reduce material costs, simplify logistics, drive down electricity charges and shorten supply chains,” According to Nandan Nilekani.

And Mr Friedman concludes by telling us that IBM is also getting into the act believing that the Indian "back room" boffins will still require a lot of guys up front to direct matters.

And the NYT columnist concludes: "So, mom, dad, tell your kids: if they’re looking for a good stable-growth career — green consultants, green designers, green builders are all going to be in huge demand. And if they can speak a little Hindi — all the better."

Worth considering for us down under?