Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Sustainability Strategies at Walden Paddlers, Inc.

Walden Paddlers, a market leader in popularly priced recreational kayaks, used a simple, inexpensive guide to evaluate decisions against a parameter of environmental responsibility. This guide was applied across Walden's virtual corporation structure to yield quick innovations and economic, strategic, and environmental advantages. The guide enabled Walden and its network of partners to produce light, strong, inexpensive kayaks with superior performance characteristics made from 100-percent-recycled plastic, the only such kayaks on the market. Walden also employed the guide to create a nearly waste-free product-packaging-and-shipping system. Walden's decision guide succeeded within a network of collaborative alliances because it was applied comprehensively, it helped to clarify common goals, it created benefits for all participants, and it was implemented by a skilled entrepreneur-leader who coordinated decision making in the network.