This past week I attended a workshop hosted by Swissnex Boston, an initiative of the Swiss embassy, in which the challenges of building innovation partnerships were discussed. Entitled “Open Innovation to Innovation Partnerships – A new paradigm in a troubled economy,” it was a successful event (IMHO) mostly because there was an appropriate mix of large companies, SMEs, academics and service providers. My experience has been that companies pursuing open innovation benefit more by talking to SMEs and universities than like-sized peers since the latter just propel big-company self-absorption and bureaucracy that are the bane of successful innovation strategies.

Of particular interest to me was the focus on environmental sustainability solutions that can be exploited through open innovations. Which reminded me that one of the most frequent OI challenges we see companies submit are for sustainability innovations: energy efficiency, lower waste levels, switch to non-carbon fuels, etc. This trend spands virtually all industries as fluctuating fuel prices, environmental regulations, and changing consumer buying habits refocus companies on “going green.”

Others at Nerac are much more versed than I on trends in environmental sustainability (See Rosemarie Szostak‘s blog on sustainability called “The Dirty Footprint“.) But I was struck by the repeated use of the word “greenwashing” by attendees from academia, environmental consulting firms, and eco-entrepreneurs. They use this term to describe the efforts by businesses to disingenuously claim environmental virtue in order to make more profit. Many attendees, including some of the presenters, postulated that the lack of progress in eco-innovation could primarily be blamed on a greenwashing attitude; big companies who ignore perfectly valid eco-strategies because they don’t want to take risks, like the status quo, and don’t care about the environment. The result, so went the theme, is that eco-entreprenuers have their great ideas ignored by “old, white, chemical engineers” who are too indifferent, too myopic, and are not incentivized to pursue these types of innovations because they get the benefit of being thought “green” without the investment.

Personally, I thought some of the conversation turned a bit whacky. I don’t deny that greenwashing exists. But that it is the primary hurdle to new innovation is a bit of a stretch. At Nerac, we evaluate many of these new eco-strategies for both the entrepreneurs and their potential big-company licensees/customers. Often their proposed economic benefits are “blackwashed” – a term I create to describe an eco-technology for which the economic benefits are stretched past the limits of the buyer’s “sniff test.” They promise to put your company “in the black” with an approach that provides financial benefit and improvements in sustainability or other environmental benefits. Too often, their economic benefits are so ill-conceived that they are dismissed out of hand. I suspect, given some experience, that the drivers behind blackwashing include lack of experience in business model creation and zealous environmental positions that cause bias in the eco-entrepreneur. The rate of incidence of blackwashing is high enough that the “splatter” affects genuine eco-innovation; painting their ideas as always tainted by bias that ignores economic reality.

But the result of “blackwashing” is exactly the same as “greenwashing” – good ideas get ignored.