Is bigger better?

Not necessarily. Here at GreenBuildExpo, the name of the game is to attract attention. It's not an easy thing to do, with 800 exhibitors competing for attention on the  floor. The conventional way to do so is by being taller and flashier than the other guys. It signifies money, power, and the wherewithal to do things well and thoroughly—all the things, in short, that are supposed to make an enterprise irresistible to customers. It's a mating dance, really, and an approach that's entirely to be expected from players in a mainstream business culture that assumes that size is what separates the alpha dogs from the also-rans.

But wait a moment. GreenBuildExpo is where green companies assemble, and isn't the emerging green culture supposed to embrace values that diverge from the old ways? In theory, yes: service to people and planet and all that. Yet if you were to do a fly-over of the exhibit hall, GreenBuildExpo would look an awful lot like a conventional trade show.

Tucked away among the size competition are two companies that opted to replace the standard approach with mostly open space that keeps their eco-footprint to a minimum.

Invista, the manufacturer of Antron Fiber Products and other fibers and polymers, went with an exhibit consisting of nothing more than some chairs and carpeting, and a blackboard. The carpeting had been with local customers and in one case had been in use for 32 years—the point being that the company's products are built to last, a key element of sustainability. "We just vacuumed them and laid them down," says Henning Bloech, the company's global sustainability director.

The exhibit is also electricity-free. Instead of LEDs it has a chalkboard, illustrated on an ongoing basis by a local artist.

Forbo Flooring Systems, a Swiss company and the third largest resilient floor manufacturer in the world, took a similar though not identical approach. Its exhibit consists of samples to walk on and a small desk with a laptop connecting visitors to its national sales manager, working out of the company's US headquarters in Pennsylvania.

"A couple of years ago," Casey Johnson told me, "we had fourteen people at our GreenBuildExpo exhibit in Portland. We produced about eleven tons of carbon dioxide. Now we've got two people on site, both of whom come from the Boston area. We've sourced our flooring from a local distributor and will be donating it to Habitat for Humanity. Out total footprint will be 906 pounds."

And next year? "We'll  take the same approach again. We think it's a much better approach than all those monuments to sustainability."

To the extent that the companies with the "monuments" are offsetting their carbon footprint, that does, of course, make their approach more eco-friendly. Even so, the Invista and Forbo exhibits deliver an important message—that you don't have to play the "bigger, stronger" game to make the case that you're better.

It's a lesson that's more relevant than ever during this dramatic period in history when we're being forced to re-invent the nature of capitalism itself. Small really is as good, if not better. It's a lesson we're all learning—and sometimes being forcefed.