Stainless Chef

Gotcha!, a resource of U.C. Berkeley’s School of Information Management & Systems, defines "early adopter" as "a minority of clients/users that are the first to perceive value in new products, services, or ideas, begin to use them, and become adept with them before the majority of eventual clients/users does." Designer, contractor, and environmental consultant John Picard, the man behind multimillion-dollar ecosensitive ren-ovations of Sony’s Culver City studio lot and New York headquarters and the Clinton administration’s "Greening of the White House," is perhaps the earliest adopter of them all. As he contemplates the area of his basement that will eventually accommodate solid-oxide fuel-cell storage, Picard notes, "Nothing will be here for at least 15 months, but for me that’s nothing."