|
|
|
|
|||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Vermiculture
Innovation
|
|||||||||
| Here
we are, on stage at IESE’s annual New Business Forum, in front of the
great and good of Barcelona’s business set, while Gianluigi Casetta
delivers a Ciceronian oration expounding the virtues of cow manure. This
is not any ordinary dung –the eloquent Italian explains– but dung
“metabolised” by a prolific breed of California Redworm, transforming
it into organic fertilizer of the highest quality. The scions of Catalan commerce assembled by Pedro Nueno are keenly interested and eager to find out more. As the investment hype of the Internet has gone into reverse, the mention of an old economy industry with a high margin and 30% annual growth sounded like music to the VCs. Perhaps the most amusing part was a question from the back row: “Can the worms also transform purín (pig manure)”, Catalonia’s most abundant by-product? Our Italian of the day, after a prompter had translated the meaning of purín, quickly decided that unfortunately our business plan only had to do with cow manure. In its write-up of the Forum, Barcelona newspaper La Vanguardia described the plan involving “un gusano especial de California” as an example of a wholesale turning away from the Internet to other, earthier themes. Even UK newspaper The Times took an interest. E-mails from interested investors soon started trickling in. |
|||||||||||
 |
