When I first asked Polish inventor Robert Dwilinski of Ammono if his new laser crystal could be sold as a cleantech product, he said he had never heard of cleantech. That’s too bad, because his product and others like it may enable the next generation of energy efficient consumer products.

In Poland, and elsewhere in Central Europe, many inventors like Robert aren’t able to discover their products’ cleantech aspects by themselves. It’s cases like these that are prohibiting the sector from unleashing its full potential. That’s why we started a magazine – to help them better understand the context in which cleantech markets develop. The next natural step is then to foster interactions with people, whom they might not otherwise meet, to enable serendipitous developments.

This is what Cleantech Poland is aiming to achieve on a local level through its publications and business community. Here is a picture of our launch event, which we hosted to get people of different stripes talking. Potentially, the man with a water-efficient fire hydrant nozzle can talk to the man with an energy efficient crystal, and both will realize they can sell the product for its environmental, resource saving features. Perhaps a person with an idea or …