
Spurred by something missing in the world, the entrepreneur begins to think about and envision a product or service … The entrepreneur is often the first one to spot the opening, and if things work out that person will have a successful business. – Paul Hawken
Environmentalist Paul Hawken spoke of seeing the entrepreneurial opportunity:
Seeing the world around you clearly is a critical step in developing an idea for a business, carrying out that idea, and then thriving with an ongoing concern.
Creating a thriving business for reversing the Ecological Crisis might look like clearly seeing two things:
First, creating a thriving business for reversing the Ecological Crisis might look like clearly seeing …
… that human decision-making for meeting human physical needs (in turquoise) is creating exponentially growing things-we-extract flows and pollution flows (in orange) …
… that these exponentially growing things-we-extract flows and pollution flows are damaging the biosphere and creating the Ecological Crisis as a whole …
… that reversing the Ecological Crisis requires a simple decision-making process through which people everywhere want, decide & act to adopt regenerative options that scale back the things-we-extract flows and pollution flows …
… and that scaling back the things-we-extract flows and pollution flows allows the biosphere to regenerate itself and reverse the Ecological Crisis as a whole …
Second, creating a thriving business for reversing the Ecological Crisis might look like clearly seeing …
… that people everywhere wanting, deciding and acting to adopt regenerative options creates demand for a new & extremely simple kind of information services – called “regenerative information services” – in the form of:
accurate evaluations, comparisons and measurements
of performance benefits, cost savings benefits and biosphere-regenerating benefits
of things-we-extract options and things-we-use options for meeting human physical needs …
… that a regenerative information services enterprise supplies people everywhere with regenerative information services through a simple computer-implemented application (a “regenerative information app”) that processes performance data, incurred cost data, number of species-per-area data and incurred pollution data into usable regenerative information services …
… and that a regenerative information app uses an extremely simple algorithm (a “regenerative information algorithm”) for processing performance data, incurred cost data, number of species-per-area data and incurred pollution data into usable regenerative information services[1] …
What’s the entrepreneurial opportunity for regenerative information services?
Regenerative information services present an entrepreneurial opportunity as simple & uniquely valuable as the Google Search services supplied through the Google PageRank Algorithm.
Regenerative information services present an entrepreneurial opportunity as simple as the Google Search services supplied through the Google PageRank Algorithm because both the Regenerative Information Algorithm and the Google PageRank Algorithm are simple algorithms for processing vast amounts of data into usable information for people everywhere.
The Google PageRank Algorithm[2] – as invented by Larry Page and Sergey Brin ca. 1997 – is a simple link analysis algorithm for assigning a numerical weighting – to vast numbers of web pages – that measures the relative importance of each Web page for supplying people everywhere with usable search results …
Like the simple Google PageRank Algorithm, the simple Regenerative Information Algorithm processes vast amounts of:
performance data
incurred cost data
# of species-per-area data for things-we-extract options, and
incurred pollution data for things-we-use options
and supplies people everywhere with usable information in the form of:
accurate evaluations, comparisons and measurements
of performance benefits, cost savings benefits and biosphere-regenerating benefits
of things-we-extract options and things-we-use options for meeting human physical needs (that is, regenerative options).
The Google PageRank Algorithm supplies a uniquely valuable information service because:
it generates Google Search results usable by people everywhere, and
it supplies the core information service through which Alphabet (Google) has built a $2 trillion business enterprise as of May 2025.
Just as the Google PageRank Algorithm supplies people everywhere with uniquely valuable search services, so does the Regenerative Information Algorithm supply people everywhere with uniquely valuable regenerative information services for adopting regenerative options that deliver performance benefits, cost savings benefits and biosphere-regenerating benefits.
What’s the scale of value supplied by regenerative information services?
Paul Hawken’s Project Drawdown showed that we possess 93 categories of commercially-available regenerative options that – when widely adopted – were estimated to deliver more than $97 trillion of avoided cost savings (cost savings benefits) and more than 1 trillion tons of avoided greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution (biosphere-regenerating benefits) …
Rounding up the scale of avoided cost savings – delivered by regenerative options – from $97 trillion to $100 trillion[3] …
… and multiplying the scale of avoided cost savings by $2 spent on regenerative information services to gain $100 of avoided cost savings …
… equals a $2 trillion scale of value for regenerative information services …
In other words, simple regenerative information services present an entrepreneurial opportunity as uniquely valuable – on a scale of $2 trillion – as the $2 trillion value of the Google enterprise built on the Google Search services supplied through the simple Google PageRank Algorithm.
In the words of Ben Silbermann, “If Google teaches you anything, it’s that small ideas can be big.”
Some people might feel excited to be in on the founding of an enterprise supplying regenerative information services -- on a scale of $2 trillion -- for reversing the Ecological Crisis.
How about you? What’s your feeling about that?
Creating a thriving business for reversing the Ecological Crisis might look like founding an enterprise that supplies people everywhere with regenerative information services – on a scale of $2 trillion – for reversing the Ecological Crisis.
What do you think? Does this make sense to you?
If the prospect of practically & actually reversing the Ecological Crisis excites you, please consider subscribing to my Substack channel, Solving the Eco-crises:
I’m super grateful for your likes, comments and re-stacks.
Thank you for reading Solving the Eco-crises.
Peace and Aloha!
Erik
P.S. I cross-posted this article on Medium for greater reach.
[1] The “unit of physical performance supplied or saved” will depend on the nature of the things-we-extract option or things-we-use option for meeting a human physical need. For example, the “unit of physical performance supplied or saved” by an energy option for meeting a human physical need (a things-we-use option) will be kilowatt-hours (kWh) for an electric power option and gigajoules (GJ) for a heating or cooling option.
[2] S. Brin & L. Page, “The anatomy of a large-scale hypertextual Web search engine,” Computer Networks and ISDN Systems 30 (1998) 107-117.
[3] Rounding up the Project Drawdown avoided cost savings figure from $97 trillion to $100 trillion is justified because Project Drawdown selectively studied only 93 categories of regenerative options from among thousands of categories of options for meeting human physical needs.