As someone that is passionately involved in getting clean tech businesses off the ground I can’t help thinking that some of the businesses in this space are missing a trick or five?

For the last few months I have been working with a renewable energy business that is crammed full of engineering and proven IP excellence, they have a strong business model, off-take agreements and contracts in place – an investors dream. But it is lacking one key ingredient – and that is business soul. The emphasis on the business is – due to the background of its people – driven on a project management and large corporate structures, they are keen to debate sign-on fees, investor restrictions, pension funds, multi-layered structures and confining operating procedures based on what they know.

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As a recruiter, I’ve had countless conversations with excited, motivated and very eager people that are looking to break into Clean-Tech. Like many, they are looking to do something more meaningful at work and something that transcends and has a deep impact. Another group of job seekers, and they are not necessarily mutually exclusive, are those eying the Clean-Tech space as a potential island in a very tumultuous economic sea.

Unfortunately, it is hard to assess just how much value you can provide to a sector that you know very little about. I will put forth that for a cash constrained company, it is difficult to project how success in an unrelated industry might translate to success in the industry they operate in. (more…)