I was reminded recently of a well known story that anchors the true spirt of MarketShift Strategies' business growth journey, and it goes something like this:

...Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Nathan Myhrvold once sent Bill Gates a memo on a crazy idea:

"I even... I think the title of the thing was 'a crazy idea,'" Myhrvold recalled. "And he sent me back this piece of mail that I have always cherished since then, and it said: 'This is the most bizarre, craziest idea you've ever had; please proceed.'"

This anecdote is one of my favorites as it captures perfectly the tension between ideas and risk -and the people who courageously support and develop them.

MarketShift Strategies was born from a risk taking moment several years ago; an idea hatched in a kitchen over a glass of wine at the end of a long day at work. There was never a picture of what the company would look like years down the road; but there was always this hard-wired vision of making sustainable industries highly competitive -rivaling the most traditional firms and shifting mainstream market share to an era of environmental and business partnership. In fact, that vision was crazy at the time. Technology application in sustainable industries was about five years behind corporate america, investment dollars had yet to realize the potential in a green economy, the word ‘sustainability’ registered as an alternative movement, and public policy support for a new-era economy was still a back-page story for most people.

But perhaps it is the crazy ideas that hold the most merit. From that moment of framing the future at the kitchen table, MarketShift Strategies has grown into a highly informed business strategy group helping businesses find value in the connection between people, planet, profit and innovation. We recognize a new economy requires a dramatic shift in behavior, business practices and attitude. It also requires new technologies responding to wider market adoption of sustainable practices, purchases and innovation.

And so our penchant for the uncharted and unknown has allowed us to explore fresh and strategic pathways in a very complicated world. Our principles have given shape to new processes, like our CEO Index Program, and have generated collaborative platforms spawning new economic development approaches. But above all, our crazy idea has evolved into one of the most informed companies addressing climate, energy and opportunity. And it is the people surrounding and inspiring us who make it possible. Yeah you, you know who you are - and our list is long and deep. And for that, our company thanks you.

I believe in the intelligent edge. This is the point where the tension between boundaries and new frontiers is the strongest and the balance between advancement and retreat is the most profound.

In fact, much of innovation plays with this sense of equilibrium, sometimes at widely fluctuating rates. Ideas evolve faster than a marketplace can absorb; renewable energy solutions outpace investment dollars and infrastructure renewal; climate change overtakes market reform.

But when the balance is in perfect harmony between the concept and the demand, the intelligent edge begins to shine with vigor. Take economic innovation, for example. For years people like Hernando de Soto, Paul Romer, Noreena Hertz and the recent Nobel Prize for Economic winners Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson, have developed and championed unique economic approaches that sit at the boundaries of law, physics, anthropology and political science. When investments were at an all time high, prosperity rang a bell every 15 minutes and warnings of a dire future didn't exist, their theories received little practice within the stable marketplace.

However, after the economic meltdown of last year, suddenly these theories are finding their intelligent edge: the poetic balance between new thinking and opportunities of fulfillment. For instance, the financial industry has been quick to court new approaches through radical forms of social investment models that yield investment returns with social or environmental benefit.

The Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) combines a membership pool of big banks, philanthropic institutions and investment management firms. This mixing of mainstream financial interests with socially motivated organizations moves charitable activity into the sphere of profitable business. This ties deep, social benefits to investment return, and places profit into the human, social and climate context.

But where GIIN has the advantage of a rising Phoenix, corporations are wrestling with how to embrace new thinking in a sea of legacy leadership set against the obvious opportunity of change. IBM has created a unique program that not only embraces an intelligent edge in its application, but is the beginnings of an adaptive business model that blends the best practices of NGOs, business, public/private partnerships, ethics and social impact with emerging leadership.

Dubbed the Corporate Service Corp, IBM sends its top executive teams into emerging markets like Africa, Asia and Latin America to provide business consulting skills for NGOs, local businesses and organizations. For one month IBM employees have the opportunity to intersect on challenges in the developing world, honing their leadership and transferring skills into developing economies; conversely, IBM employees bring a well-developed socially responsible mindset back into the corporate environment. These emerging leaders -over time- transform the corporate culture, decision framework and business behavior to one that embraces the social, human and climate context of globalization –where the tension between profit and responsibility begins to find a new harmonic and meaningful balance.

Our institutions, ideas, economies, markets and human presence hang on this fulcrum of advancement or retreat. Where the line between reshaping our future and returning to business as usual will clearly define the next generation of our emotional, intellectual and social evolution. Embracing this intelligent edge will be the necessary attunement to a new organizational hybrid that places social and climate implications at the center of all our motivations.