The New Nature of Business

Chapter 8A Whole New World of Business Opportunities

“They are like Saudi Arabia,” James Gentizon said. “They have plenty of energy.”

James, a Swiss engineer and entrepreneur, wasn't talking to us about a new oil field in the Middle East or the Americas. No, he was talking about Rossinière, a small, Swiss, Alpine town in the canton of Vaud.

At first sight, though, Rossinière looks nothing like Saudi Arabia. It's one of those typical picturesque Swiss towns surrounded by mountains, reachable only by a small road or train. Geographically, it’s about halfway as the crow flies between Montreux at the shores of Lake Geneva, and that most famous of all Swiss towns: Gruyère, known for its delicious cheese.

So, what had James so excited about Rossinière, then? As it turned out, it was wood. “There is 1,000 hectares of wood,” he said, pointing to the forests all around the town center. That wood, he said, could the town's answer to the two wicked problems facing its people—and those around the world: human-made climate change, caused by the burning of fossil fuels, and the decline of democracy, caused by all kinds of forces, including the concentration of economic power in the hands of just a few individuals and companies. In Rossinière, the abundant presence of wood could solve these challenges on a micro-scale. And if his project succeeded there, it could quite likely succeed almost anywhere in the world, he believed.

In Chapter 7, we saw how existing, large businesses like Holcim ...