This morning I read the results of a two-year study conducted by NASA and the Associated Landscape Contractors of America (ALCA). The study was designed to determine if house plants can improve indoor air quality. The answer was a resounding yes – see NASA Study House Plants Clean Air for the results, including a list of the 10 house plants most effective at removing formaldehyde, benzene, and carbon monoxide (you’d be surprised how much of these are in our homes.) As interesting as this subject was, I couldn’t also help but notice the entrepreneurial skill demonstrated by the ALCA.

Here we are in an economic mess – obviously it’s not a time when a lot of people are going to hire landscape contractors, who sell what is generally considered a luxury item. But with this study, landscape contractors will be able to boost business doing indoor landscaping/gardening design/plant services and so on for homes and offices.

Why will they be able to sell this when they are having trouble with regular landscaping work? Because they’re offering a remedy for the one problem that, to the American public, right now, is as important, if not more so, than the economy – the environment. Giving people what they think is important is a classic, and key, entrepreneurial skill.

I don’t know if anyone at the ALCA was thinking about this aspect of things two years ago, and longer, when the study started. But, if that’s the case, I applaud their entrepreneurial skill. In fact, it’s a brilliant move regardless of economic times: it gives contractors a way to achieve success when times are tough.