Chamber of Eco Commerce 'Hub' launches in Finland

January 14, 2011, Helsinki --- The Chamber of Eco Commerce 'Hub' officially launches in Finland. CEC is an international trade alliance, a leader in fostering a vibrant community combining sound science and business practices with sustainability. Made up of businesses, organizations, and individuals created to advocate Eco Commerce. 

“The idea behind the CEC is to foster entrepreneurship, unleash eco innovations, and ease access to seed capital and start-up finance for new and small innovative firms. We enable innovators to turn new ideas into new products. Eco innovation is not only an environmental imperative it bears also the potential to contribute to better economic performance with new innovative technologies, more efficient production methods, more sustainable value chains and new jobs. I am passionate about our role in engaging in policy that advances sustainability. Most importantly, we will communicate the importance of smart policy”, says Minna LeVine, CEO, Chamber of Eco Commerce.  

There is growing recognition that innovation encompasses a wide range of activities in addition to

R&D, such as organizational changes, training, testing, marketing and design. Creating First Application and Market Replication projects, educating individuals about the real economic and environmental benefits of eco innovation and sustainable practices, and introduction of new technologies or significantly improved products, will be a major component of the Chamber’s work. "When you operate in Eco Commerce business, you’re doing a good thing. We are contributing to sustainability reducing costs and environmental impact, enhancing business image, improving reputation with customers and suppliers, and getting into new product lines”, LeVine says. 

Eco Commerce is a hot topic worldwide. Innovation, which involves both the creation and diffusion of products, process and methods, is a critical part of the solution. It provides the foundation for new industries, businesses and jobs. Innovation-led growth will make it easier to address pressing social and global challenges. To boost economic growth, innovation as a system,  requires a broader view than simply science and technology policies that have tended to focus on the provision of inputs such as R&D and the development of scientists and engineers.

Another critical element in fostering pro-growth innovation systems is the promotion of entrepreneurship. We need to focus on new young firms, which tend generate large productivity and employment gains. Governments should try to go beyond administrative simplification and produce a multidimensional stimulus to entrepreneurship. Access to finance is a particular problem for new entrants especially at this very moment of risk aversion and rising costs of capital, since they have no history of success and in many cases their assets consist of intangibles like a patent that is difficult to value.

CEC works closely with world class universities, public research organizations, and centers of innovation. We perceive them as essential cogs in the innovation machine. Future plans to involve the younger generation include initiating internships for college and university students and reaching out to high schools and offering educational workshops for students of all levels, from K though 12 to higher education. CEC wants to communicate the message to them that ‘green’ is not just cleaner food, less toxic homes, alternative and complementary medicine, rational and sustainable use of resources, but it is a great field to get into because it hits that triple bottom line notion which is Profits, People, and Planet.

New members in Finland will be invited to participate in Chamber of Eco Commerce founders meeting in Helsinki in February 2011, and other upcoming activities such as annual leadership meeting in Atlanta, pilot and market replication projects, seminars, networking events, job development programs, and advocating for legislation.

To join CEC Finland, please go to: 

http://www.chamberofecocommerce.com/joinus/membership.html

For more information, please contact Erkki Lindeberg, Administrator, CEC Finland: 

Finland@ChamberofEcoCommerce.com