Osaka, Feb 18, 2008 — Thirteen years after Sean White and I published The Total Quality Corporation which showed how companies can make money by going green, McKinsey last week announced to the world that companies can make money by going green. Why did it take McKinsey so long to figure out what you can get from a used book site like exlibris for a dollar or two?

McKinsey has locations in 51 countries, 20 full practices that speak 120 languages, and serves 70% of the Fortune Magazine’s list of most admired companies. Yet it has to reinvent ideas that date from the early 1990s. What gives?