1. “We unlock the value of
great ideas.”
June2013
Building businesses for a
21st century economy
that are...
Sustainable.
Equitable.
Profitable.
535 AlbanyStreet, Boston, Massachusetts 02118 U.S.A. t.6172660965
NATIONAL
INSTITUTE FOR A
SUSTAINABLE
ECONOMY

2. 1
Our world economy is changing
rapidly. Businesses will need to
change with it.
But how? Where are the new opportunities for growth
and prosperity in our changing economy? NISE! believes
that on the cutting edge of the new 21st century
economy there will be great business opportunities in
addressing needs or solving problems arising from the
values and rules we use to produce, price and sell goods
and services in our current 20th century economy. The
source of the opportunities will be increasing conflicts
between the values of the old economy and two life
forces with which they continuously interact:
■ Human Life and Standard of Living
Building and maintaining safe and healthy
environments for families and communities
is among our nations's highest
priorities. Yet, increasingly the
values driving our business
practices threaten the safety,
health or well-being of families
and communities. These
conflicts raise issues of
economic justice —
what is fair, who should bear what costs and who
should profit.
■ Ecological Life
Maintaining a balance between organisms in the
natural world and their surroundings is crucial for
the health of our planet and human life as well.
However, the rapid encroachment on the natural
habitats by our dominant 20th century business
practices threatens to drastically alter or destroy
this balance. These conflicts raise issues of
ecological justice — again what is fair to other
forms of life and the habitats that sustain them.
These two conflicts arising from 20th century business
practices and the harm they inflict on humanity and the
eco-system are demanding our attention and solutions
— solutions that are equitable from the perspective of
their impact on human and social life, and
balanced from the perspective of
ecological life. The demand for
these solutions represents
enormous business
opportunities that will be
drivers for our emerging 21st
century economy.
Re-Imagining
Business
A New Approach for a Sustainable Economy
Human/Social
Processes
Ecological
Processes
Ecological
Justice
Economic
Processes
SOLUTION
Equitable & Ecologically
Sustainable Economy
Environmental
Justice
Economic
Justice

3. 2
Our mission? Bringing to market new
business solutions for environmental
and social problems that are…
Sustainable. Equitable. Profitable.
We are a mission driven, private sector business channel
for delivering to market valued products and services re-
imagined through the alignment of values driven
resources, talent and capital. The cutting edge business
opportunities on which we capitalize are transformed into
business solutions that are also agents for change.
Our commitment to change that is sustainable, equitable
and profitable is supported by our ability to unlock the
value of great ideas. We do so by developing:
1) transformative business solutions for our clients, 2)
catalytic collaborations with our partners and 3)
innovative products and services for our own account.
SOLUTIONS
For businesses that want sustainable, equitable and
profitable business solutions, we offer four consulting
practices that can be a catalyst for their development.
Our NISE! SOLUTIONS cover a wide range of issues
and challenges confronted by businesses whether they
are early stage or mature.
■ Innovating Business Opportunities
■ Transitioning Control, Ownership and
Governance
■ Engaging Disparate Stakeholders
■ Investing for Impact
COLLABORATIONS
We believe that achieving our mission depends on
working with others of a like mind to accelerate the rate
at which sustainable businesses grow and prosper. We
also believe that accelerating this process will require re-
thinking leadership models, realigning networks to be
more mutually supportive and developing new platforms
that facilitate and leverage collaborative efforts. So we
are actively seeking NISE! COLLABORATIONS with
businesses, academia and government in three areas:
■ Enhancing Leadership
■ Connecting Networks
■ Leveraging Platforms
INNOVATIONS
We believe in leading by example, so NISE! has initiated
the development and implementation of its own
innovative products and services. Our focus has been
on developing NISE! INNOVATIONS in the areas of
energy conservation and finance. Our three initiatives
are:
■ Unlocking the Value of Conservation for
Consumers
■ Addressing the Human Factor in Energy
Conservation
■ Creating New Impact Investment Instruments
Our Mission
A Catalyst for Sustainable Businesses

4. 3
Is your world changing fast? Change
with it. NISE! can show you how.
NISE! Solutions are generated by re-imagining business
problems and opportunities from an entrepreneurial
perspective. We begin with a clean sheet of paper, as if
we are starting a new business. But we don’t start by
building a business plan; we start by building a series of
experiments. Ones that will test in the real world your
assumptions about what will work and what won’t.
Ones that you can change quickly to respond to how the
market responds to you. Ones that build a strong
business platform for re-inventing your business before
the changing world changes it for you.
Solution Practices
NISE! has four areas of practice that cover a wide range
of business issues and challenges. In general, they
address how to innovate, engage, transition and invest
in ways that are sustainable, equitable and profitable.
Within each practice, we will work with
you to develop and implement
solutions tailor-made to your
business and its needs.
Innovating Business Opportunities
Whether yours is a start-up, emerging or
mature business, NISE! can help drive
innovation throughout your operations
and into your products and services.
These innovations will address such key
questions as:
■ How are my markets changing and where are my
emerging market opportunities?
■ Is my value proposition compelling enough to
attract and profitably serve a substantial and
growing market?
■ What is the most effective way to deliver my value
proposition to my customers?
■ What are the organizational and cultural changes
that need to occur to prosper today and
tomorrow?
The process of developing innovations can be limited to
a specific area of your business or be more
comprehensive. It may include leading retreats,
developing financial models, conducting customer
surveys and evaluating your management team. We do
what it takes for you to arrive at the solution you need.
Engaging Disparate Stakeholders
More and more, good business means having
great collaborations between stakeholder
groups unaccustomed to working
together. Often they represent different
business, social, economic or political
interests, yet have much to gain from finding
SOLUTIONS
Sustainable. Equitable. Profitable.
Innovate
Engage
Transition
Innovate
Invest
Engage

5. 4
common ground. NISE! can work with you to
successfully bridge the gaps between such groups and
create effective win-win collaborations. The bridges
NISE! helps to build can address questions such as:
■ What do stakeholders value and what are their
issues and needs?
■ What is the common ground that creates benefits
for all?
■ How do we engage stakeholders to achieve these
benefits?
Transitioning Control, Ownership and
Governance
Often the time comes more quickly than
expected that business owners and senior
executives must face transitions raising
complex issues of control, ownership
and governance. Whether they result
from raising capital from investors, creating
ownership opportunities for valued employees, a
death among owners or succession planning, NISE! can
help you to successfully navigate and negotiate a
pathway to a workable solution. We help you address
such difficult questions as:
■ Is now the time to begin a transition?
■ What do I want the business to be after the
transition?
■ How do I maintain my business’s values and
culture during and after the transition?
■ How do I incentivize, protect or engage key
employees during the process?
Investing for Impact
All investors want a market rate of return on
their investments. Yet investments can do
more than generate a profit. Skillfully
designed and placed, investments can
produce profits while contributing to an
ecologically sustainable environment, an
equitable allocation of resources and
opportunities, and other objectives that strengthen the
fabric of our society and resilience of our economy.
Whether you are investing working capital reserves,
pension funds, family wealth or institutional investment
funds, NISE! can advise you on investing for impact by
helping you answer critical questions such as:
■ Given my business and investment objectives,
what types of impact investing can I pursue?
■ What are the existing options available for making
impact investments?
■ How can I create my own portfolio of impact
investments?
Solution Implementation
Within each of our practice areas, NISE! will work with
you to develop solutions and an Organizational Change
Agenda that provides a pathway for implementing the
newly developed solutions within your organization. We
can also offer you the option of engaging NISE! to assist
in or drive the implementation process on a turnkey basis.
Key professionals would be placed with your organization
on an interim basis to accomplish the objectives critical to
successfully launching your implementation process. The
role of these professionals could range from skilled expert
in a functional area, to trusted advisor to the CEO, to
acting CEO. Whatever works bests to build a firm
platform for your future success. A platform for new
solutions that are sustainable, equitable and profitable.
Transition
Invest

6. 5
The tipping point is nearing. Be ahead
of the curve. Collaborate with NISE!
Our economy is changing -- rapidly. Some don’t like it,
but are adapting to it. We love change and embrace it!
For us it means new opportunities and another chance
to do business better. How? By being more
sustainable, equitable and profitable.
But to do business better will require:
■ New ways of thinking about leadership and how
we work with others.
■ Re-thinking our connections to networks and re-
aligning them in more productive ways.
■ Developing new platforms that facilitate and
leverage collaboration.
NISE! Collaborations is our effort to do business better
while unlocking the value of great ideas through
collaborations with other businesses, academia and
government.
Enhancing Leadership
Our goal is to work with others to promote leadership
training and executive education that provides a firm
foundation for leading organizations in ways that are
sustainable, equitable and profitable. Options we are
exploring include collaborations with existing executive
education programs, partnering in the development of an
organization of leadership peer circles and executive
coaching.
Connecting Networks
Aided by social media, and driven by shifting values,
changing demographics and emerging markets,
networks are constantly forming, growing and
dissipating. In the process, new networks are
challenging the alignment of existing ones while often
remaining disconnected themselves.
Our goal is to collaborate with others in business,
academia and government to identify those networks
that can contribute to sustainable, equitable and
profitable businesses and connect them in ways that
reveal and optimize their common ground. Pursing this
goal may involve scaling some networks and
consolidating others, but the intended result is an
ecosystem of networks that is a driving force for
businesses doing business better.
Leveraging Platforms
Creating an ecosystem of networks will require easy
ways to communicate and cooperate. It will also require
sharing resources to reduce costs and facilitate growth.
Our goal is to work with others to leverage the impact
of networks by creating platforms to do just that.
Options would include developing a “big data” platform,
a “back office” platform and a “crowd-funding” platform
that would be shared by the network ecosystem.
COLLABORATIONS
Lead. Connect. Leverage.

7. 6
We believe in leading by example.
So NISE! is innovating too.
NISE! is in the business of:
■ Re-imagining business solutions that are
sustainable, equitable and profitable
■ Re-inventing business models to implement them.
■ Reaping the value it creates.
We want to lead by example, so NISE! is innovating
business opportunities in the areas of energy efficiency
and finance.
Unlocking the Value of Conservation
for Consumers
NISE! has been in the forefront of developing a residential
energy conservation system that would accelerate the
reduced use of energy in the residential sector --
currently the slowest to move toward greater
conservation. The system under development
by NISE! is specifically designed to help
consumers reduce energy consumption by
15-20%, achieve a similar savings on
their energy bill and have the
opportunity to earn money as part of
a consumer driven virtual utility.
NISE! is also developing a financing mechanism that will
defer cash payments for the system, thereby reducing
the payback period to nearly zero.
Based on this new business model, NISE! was the
recipient of the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center
Innovation Grant for Energy Efficiency in Residential
Homes.
Addressing the Human Factor in
Energy Conservation
NISE! is also innovating energy efficiency strategies that
incorporate the human occupants of buildings as active
rather than passive agents of change. As a project of
the Massachusetts Division of Capital Asset
Management and Maintenance (DCAMM), NISE!
designed and implemented a first-in-the-nation energy
conservation pilot that integrated the use of information
technology and behavior change strategies to extend the
impact of building centric conservation programs.
Known as “START”, the pilot was conducted on the
Dartmouth campus of the University of
Massachusetts and demonstrated that
the NISE! methodology -- combining
real-time, usage data distributed to
consumers; a peer driven engagement
organization; and a rewards program --
could significantly reduce electricity
usage. NISE! is using this experience to
develop product and service modules for
multi-residential complexes and large office tenants.
Creating New Impact Investing
Instruments
In the financial area, NISE! is developing an
alternative financing model for the use of Social
Impact Bonds (SIB) which are currently
intended to create a new source of financing
for the non-profit sector. The NISE! model is
designed to mainstream SIBs by making them
more attractive to traditional investors and
targeting their use by the private sector.
INNOVATIONS
Re-Imagine. Re-Invent. Reap Value.
SIB
Save.
Earn.
Empower.

8. Want to Learn More?
To learn more about NISE! and its services, contact its
President and CEO, Edward Dugger III.
eduggeriii@usnise.com.
www.linkedin.com/in/edwardduggeriii
Web
www.usnise.com
Twitter
http://twitter.com/usnise
Facebook
http://facebook.com/NISE.US
Main Office
40-A Orchardhill Road
Boston, MA 02130
617-500-6651