General Motors

General Motors received more clean-energy patents in the past year than any other company, according to data released a few weeks ago. The data comes from the Clean Energy Patent Growth Index, published quarterly by the law firm Heslin Rothenberg Farley & Mesiti (which also provides data for our annual State of Green Business report).

Today is a watershed day for General Motors — and I’m not talking just about the historic and record-breaking initial public offering marking the company's return to the stock market, and away from majority ownership by the taxpayers.

Since it was announced that GM was selling the HUMMER brand to Chinese firm Tengzhong, I’ve followed the commentary on Twitter (I’m @rogerdooley) with interest. There were a few surprises. One was that there are a lot of mindless HUMMER haters on Twitter.

I was driving to the local baseball field this week (very slowly–there’s a townwide sidewalk construction project underway and every street is a work zone). Coming the other way was a big Cadillac driven by someone in the Cadillac market sweet spot–a 75-year-old guy. Which got me wondering about Cadillac and GM’s restructuring and the flashy, angular Caddies they’ve been selling for the past 10 years. The guy I saw was driving an older Seville, long and smoother, a real Caddy.

What to make of this week's bankruptcy filing by General Motors? The beginning of the end? The end of the beginning? A death? Rebirth? Something in between?

Given the months-long anticipation of this development, much already has been written and said, and many fingers pointed. GM, as Paul Ingrassia recently opined in the Wall Street Journal, made "decades of dumb decisions."  

by: Idris Mootee

In a recent journal article “How to create market-focused product winners” by Roger More (a marketing prof at the Richard Ivey School of Business), he talked about why companies fail due to lack of market-focus. Prof More has a unique and entertaining style of delivering which is hard to find, he has been teaching marketing for decades at Ivey. Him and I often have very opposite views on many aspects of marketing. I did enjoy his classes.

by: Joel Makower

by: Roger Dooley

by: David Wigder

While many corporations leverage the Internet to distribute information about environmental initiatives, a few companies are going much further by facilitating two-way dialogue with stakeholders.  

Some companies may view such dialogue – via email, web forums, chat rooms and video - as risky, as it may open them up to public scrutiny. Moreover, this sentiment may be especially true today for those brands that compete in carbon-intensive industries. 

by: Joel Makower

It's been a pretty tough week in Detroit, with the major auto companies reeling from layoffs and setbacks. On Saturday, two front-page stories captured the mood.