Since my last missive of 2010 was one of looking back, I suppose it is appropriate that we dedicate this year's first piece to looking forward with, of course, a periodic check in the rearview mirror to see if something nasty is following us.

I really recommend Heather King's rocking good interview with Autodesk CEO Carl Bass. My team at EcoTech International uses Autodesk products daily, so I am familiar with that component of their business. I've appreciated how the company has continued to expand its robust sustainability offerings over the years and know of its commitment to this field through my friendship with Autodesk sustainability chief Phil Bernstein. In spite of this I learned a lot of very interesting stuff from the interview, in particular Autodesk's role in supporting emerging cleantech companies by providing custom or conventional design tools at low to no cost. This is exactly the kind of enlightened self-interest that we need to see much more of in this country.

What excites Bass going forward is how much computing power is now at people's fingertips, which he believes will enable us to much more affordably redesign our future. Echoing this crystal ball gazing, GreenBiz.com Editor Tilde Herrera offers insights from 20 executives from a range of companies about what excites them for 2011, and Managing Editor Matt Wheeland takes them way out on a limb and asks them about 2012. These pieces are part of a suite of articles by the crack GreenBiz Group editorial team who also asked the business leaders about their thoughts on prospects and challenges for 2011. Perhaps not surprisingly in Editor Leslie Guevarra's piece, the economy was perhaps the most mentioned challenge and yet potential cause for optimism for the group. Most saw the beginnings of a turnaround this year though many cautioned that it isn't going to happen immediately.

Editor Jonathan Bardelline writes about how companies see their sustainability efforts changing in 2011. I think that Terry Yosie, president and CEO of the World Environment Center, nailed it when he said the headline for 2011 is "Sustainability Achieves Scale." A good number of the sustainability executives see 2011 as the year that they move to full-scale implementation of work that they have been demonstrating and or piloting for the last few years. This early work focused on developing technical and implementation platforms, as well as getting buy-in from the C-Suite and the rank and file. And so it is with a great deal of anticipation (and not a little trepidation) that many of these folks will be going full throttle with their sustainability efforts this year.

The government headline may not be too different from that of the corporate headline, as reported by Shari Shapiro who believes that the California state government's adoption of CALGreen as the first statewide green building code (as opposed to a standard) represents a significant scaling up of regulatory approaches to green buildings.