A video about Green Business Networking which I founded in 2006

Green Business Networking in Los Angeles from Stephon Litwinczuk on Vimeo.

Film on New Economic Models - "Fixing The Future"

In our political debates, races, etc. there is always room for more conversation about the sustainable, thriving economies we can create in our own home towns. Here's a very inspiring film which I encourage you to watch if you are wondering what can be done to fix our economy, and our future!

Watch Fixing the Future on PBS. See more from NOW on PBS.

I was on the radio show "Business Rockstars" with Ken Rutkowski

Today I had the pleasure of being on Ken Rutkowski's amazing radio show "Business Rockstars" on KFWB News 980 in Los Angeles with over 800,000 listeners.

We had a wonderful conversation about sustainable business, ethics in business, our flawed economic paradigm based on the illusion separate from society and nature, B-Corporations, organic food labeling, sustainable investing, maximizing the quality of relationships in business for success, community relationships to business, corporate social responsibility and sustainable and responsible investing.

Hear the interview here, my brief interview starts at minute 55.

I helped create the Access to Capital Guidebook as a member of California Financial Opportunities Roundtable

A key issue to grow our sustainable economy is moving capital to the businesses who need it most and businesses who are going to create jobs, wealth, and improvements to the quality of life for communities around the world. 

Entrepreneurship and local businesses are some of the key drivers to keeping our communities thriving, and the institutions which are meant to finance such businesses have lost human scale in the last 40-50 years. Big banks getting bigger, Wall Street dealmakers only doing bigger and bigger deals - leave much of the small to medium sized businesses without easy access to much needed capital.

Furthermore - small businesses which are privately owned are more likely to be in tune with the needs of society, the environment and the community of stakeholders around them. Thus the more ways we can support locally owned, small and medium sized enterprises, the better.

To that end, I have been very involved with the local investing movement for the last 7 years.

Most recently since mid 2011 I have been a member of the California Financial Opportunities Roundtable - a group of experts convened by the USDA Rural Economic Development and Federal Reserve Bank to identify pathways for moving money into the businesses and communities which need it most, and who will drive the most positive change for their communities. We represented finance, impact investing, philanthropy, business, economic development, government and more

The California Financial Opportunities Roundtable (CalFOR) is part of a statewide initiative supporting development of regional industry clusters to provide jobs, entrepreneurial opportunities, business growth, public and private sector investment in value-chain infrastructure and sustainable communities throughout California. Working with a wide array of partners, the goals of that project include:

• Innovation in Capital Markets and new sources of investment for projects and business growth.

• Expansion of regional food systems and associated value chain opportunities.

• Growth of biomass utilization, biofuels and renewable energy production.

• Development of region-specific industry clusters and related business networks.

• Improved Rural-Urban collaboration and related infrastructure deployment

Our ACCESS TO CAPITAL GUIDEBOOK is available for viewing and download here.

Evolving our businesses to become Common Good Corporations

There are many stories over the last 20 years of examples of ethically motivated businesses who grew to such a large scale which left the founders with choices either merge, sell out or cooperate with major corporations. The challenge has often been that the values and priorities which originally inspired the entrepreneurs from the beginning were very difficult to maintain when the business or brand is continued in the larger context, or the company is owned by a larger entity who does not share the priorities for the common good of the original entrepreneur.

One solution has been to adopt the B-Corp model, by baking the values into the DNA of the company.

My colleague and close friend Terry Mollner is an expert on such issues, and has played a meaningful role in this context for some time.

Here's a video of Terry discussing the heart of these issues, where he clarifies his vision that all companies have the opportunity to make their highest priority the COMMON GOOD, invites us to all discover the role we can play in bringing about this new way of doing business.

Common Market - What a Food Hub can do for the food economy!

We can create jobs, and healthier community by simply shifting the way that food is created and sold in our cities. It's that simple.

Building an economy based on reality.

It's time that we completely wake up as a civilization to reality as it is: EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED.

Carl Sagan said it decades ago, "the new consciousness is developing which sees the Earth as a single organism, and recognizes an organism at war with itself is doomed."

We must evolve from using war to get our needs met. This means every one of us. Starting with the language you use. Become aware of all of the ways that you use military and warfare lexicon in your daily life - do you really want to war if you are here to create peace?

From this recognition we must build an economy of connection, of relationships. An economy of peace, rather than one of war. Simply that.

Enjoy the video.