What is the use of a house if you don’t have a decent planet to put it on? (Henry David Thoreau)

United States

Our objective is to create a “green innovation bridge” between Germany and California. The Los Angeles and San Francisco regions in particular are emphasizing environmental and energy technology in the United States, and Germany and California are pursuing comparable goals in their economic and environmental policy, including environmental legislation.

For this reason, the Borderstep Institute is cooperating with organizations in California since 2012 to expand transatlantic projects and research activities concerning a green economy.

Borderstep cooperates with the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) Bren School of Environmental Science and Management on climate change and eco-entrepreneurship; with the Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship at Santa Clara University in Silicon Valley in developing programs to support and educate start-up entrepreneurs about social and sustainable entrepreneurship; and with the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator (LACI) on start-up exchange programs and the Network of Global Innovation (NGIN).

Borderstep supports a transatlantic knowledge transfer and exchange of experiences, concerning innovation, sustainability, entrepreneurship, and support for start-ups, by means of events, expert workshops, and cooperation with representatives from the scientific, business, and business de-velopment communities in Europe and the US. Creating networks of actors in the areas of clean-tech and a green economy on both sides of the Atlantic is an important component of this work.