The Green Frog from Silicon Valley

RidePal tunes its story and expands green “perk” to companies in Silicon Valley

The first public decisions of Marissa Mayer as Yahoo’s top executive has brought light onto the perks to attract critical talent in Silicon Valley and foster a productive environment: free food, smart phones, etc. One of the most successful employee programs at Google is the shared shuttle service between San Francisco and Mountain View, which has expanded to tens of buses in the Bay Area. The oldest company bus benefit is actually run by Genentech in South San Francisco. It started as a way to deal with parking limitations before growing into a popular employee retention program.

RidePal is bringing this green “perk” to smaller businesses who cannot afford it or do not have the resources to operate a bus system. The San Francisco based start-up launched last week four additional routes in the Bay Area, and participating companies can have a say on where the bus stops depending on their level membership. Workers can also vote on prospective routes on RidePal’s website (picture above).

The second generation of water technology innovators in Israel

Two months ago, I gave a talk in Silicon Valley on proven and emerging water technologies in the Middle East. As the population grew rapidly in the last century, the Middle East became an early adapter of new desalination solutions. To date, over 50% of the world’s reverses osmosis (RO) plants are deployed in this region.

On my flight from Israel, I remembered when I was first exposed to desalination as a child. My father, Haim Cohen, worked on the first desalination pilot plant outside the US in the 1960’s to provide drinking water in the Negev desert. Close to fifty years later, I joined a new water treatment company, Emefcy, after a first career in IT start-ups. It is fascinating to me how much the two projects have in common despite being half a century apart.

Ontario skating ahead of smart grid market

Smart grid is a strategic initiative for many developed countries with an aging electric infrastructure. For the Canadian Province of Ontario, it has already become a reality after its utilities deployed smart meters (picture right) to more than 80% of its 5 million electricity users. And this was done despite a sparse geography and a challenging climate. The determination can be traced back to its political leadership in green sector that wants to transform a massive infrastructure challenge into a vector of economic development.

The Minister of Energy, Chris Bentley, noted during my recent visit in Toronto that great hockey players "skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been". Blue Chip companies like GE and IBM have long been in Ontario, which benefits from an advanced manufacturing industry and world-class research & education institutions. But Canadians have more difficulty to commercialize innovation than their US neighbors. Are people in Ontario up to the challenge?