south park underpants gnomes business plan

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What 'south park' can teach you about business -- hint: stealing underpants isn't enough.

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My favorite South Park episode is called “Gnomes.” [i] Here’s the gist of the story, as I remember it.

Tweek’s underpants are being stolen. He has only one pair left.

Tweek invites the boys to sleep over and catch the thieves in the act. In the wee hours of the morning, the boys spot a gnome sneaking into Tweek’s bedroom and stealing his last pair of underpants.

“Why are you stealing my underpants?” Tweek shrieks. “That’s my last pair!”

The gnome replies, “It’s all part of our business plan.” The boys accept the gnome’s invitation to follow him to his headquarters and learn about their business.

When the boys arrive at the gnomes’ headquarters they see piles and piles of underpants, all shapes, sizes, colors, and styles. They are heaped in huge piles everywhere. Gnomes scurry to and fro, pushing enormous carts of underpants around.

“What are you doing with all these underpants?” the boys ask.

The gnome confidently replies, “Oh, this is just the collection phase: Phase 1.”

“What is Phase 2?” Now the boys are getting really curious.

The gnome doesn’t know, so he introduces them to the CEO gnome, who fires up a PowerPoint presentation.

“We have a three-step plan for our business,” the CEO gnome proudly says as he clicks to the first slide. It says, “Phase 1: Collect Underpants.”

He clicks for Phase 2, which we see has no strategy—just a giant question mark. Phase 2 is blank .

He clicks again for Phase 3, and the slide reads, “Phase 3: Profit!!!” The gnomes cheer as the CEO reads this last step aloud. There is much rejoicing.

Too bad the gnomes will never reach Phase 3. Without Phase 2, they’re toast.

Sound familiar?

Compelling Vision or Vague Concept?

How many loyal workers go about their business but have no idea why they do what they do? The gnomes themselves do not understand their own business plan, or why they steal underpants. This is identical to a business where team members do not understand the vision or how to contribute to it. That business, just like the Underpants Gnomes Underwear Enterprise , will never move to the next inflection point —not for all the underpants in the world.

We have a clarity issue here; how exactly do we move from stealing underpants to profit? That’s key—that’s really all that matters to get to the gnomes’ endgame. As it stands they simply have a cave full of underpants. No sales, marketing, distribution, target market, merchandising, you name it.

Profit? That’s a pipe dream. Ain’t gonna happen.

Do you know your company vision? Do your team members know it? Do they feel emotional about it?

The answer to those three questions can stall a company’s ability to create a SmartTribe and stunt their growth at the current inflection point. When my team does a Cultural Assessment at a company, often the first questions we ask each of the interviewees are about the company vision and their alignment with it. We’re not looking to see if the vision is almighty and powerful. We’re looking to see if there is one at all, if people can articulate it in their own words, and if they are engaged by it. We’re looking for clarity. It’s that simple . . . and yet that difficult.

The 3 Types of Clarity

Clarity is crucial in both vision and communication. Clarity can also be an act of omission—what we choose to be explicit and implicit about. This choice sets up the person we’re interacting with to succeed or struggle—and sometimes this person is oneself.

Being clear is essential to leading. When we’re clear we feel aligned and energized, and our team feels motivated because they have explicitly stated expectations. So why is being clear sometimes hard? Because being truly clear means we need to take the time to discover what we need, to articulate it clearly, and to be sure the other party understood our communication.

The meaning of the communication is what the other party understood, not what you said, or intended to say, or “really meant.” You are responsible for making sure that the receiver understood, and if they didn’t, to try, try again.

Clarity has three domains:

• Clarity of our words (saying what we truly mean or expressing what we truly need)
• Clarity of our vision and plan (where we are now, where we want to go, and how we are going to get there)
• Clarity of our intentions and energy (embodying and modeling the outcomes we want for our team)

Let’s look at clarity of vision and plan today, since that’s where the gnomes are struggling.

Clarity of Our Vision and Plan

In my previous book, Rules for Renegades, I talked about how an MBA is optional but a GSD (Get Stuff Done) is essential. To ensure you reach the next inflection point it helps to make your brand = results. Mastering the skill of clarity in terms of communicating your vision and plan is crucial so your team will know where you are now, where you want to go, and how you plan to get there.

For example, the Underpants Gnomes would’ve benefited from a plan that included exactly how, once collected, the underpants would be marketed and distributed to retail/web/catalog outlets, how orders would be fulfilled, how annual revenue targets would be achieved, what the costs of goods sold would be, and more in order to get to their glorious profit goal.

To take this a step further, a clear mission, vision, and values statement will grab hold of your team’s emotions and provide motivation to excel.

Need some clarity of vision? Download our Leading From The Inside Out kit here .

Join Christine’s tribe for free webinars and resources by clicking here . 

Christine Comaford ( @comaford ) is a neuroscience-based leadership and culture coach supporting clients in remarkable growth. Her current NY Times Bestseller is SmartTribes: How Teams Become Brilliant Together (Portfolio/Penguin).

[i] “Gnomes,” South Park , South Park Studios, original air date December 18, 1998, http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s02e17-gnomes.

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The Cautionary Tale of South Park’s Underpants Gnomes

Do yourself a favor and don’t collect any more "underpants" for the time being..

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Gotta go to work, work, work, work! We won’t stop ’til we have underpants! —The Underpants Gnomes, South Park

I want to tell you a cautionary tale. I must warn you: if you’re not careful, you could look back years from now and realize that all you’ve really done is collect a giant pile of underpants.

I promise this will make sense.

It all starts with the show South Park. In the small, fictional mountain town of South Park, Colorado, a group of small underpants gnomes sneak into people’s houses during the middle of the night and steal their underpants, delivering them to a massive underground chamber each night. They even have a theme song that they sing while working: imagine the seven dwarves of Snow White fame, but with more underpants: “Gotta go to work, work, work, work! We won’t stop ’til we have underpants!”

You might wonder why these gnomes are stealing people’s underpants, which is a valid question. It turns out they’re collecting underpants because it’s part of their master plan to build a highly successful business. However, when a gnome is questioned as to why he is collecting underpants, he always says, “Collecting underpants is just Phase 1!”

When somebody inevitably asks, “What’s Phase 2?” every gnome replies with “Phase 3 is profit!” So they know collecting underpants is Phase 1 and that Phase 3 is profit, but Phase 2 is a complete mystery. Nobody has any idea what it is! They consult their business plan, and Phase 2 is just a giant question mark. So, rather than trying to figure it out, these gnomes spend all day and all night dutifully collecting underpants without having any clue as to how to move onto Phase 2, which would then eventually get them to the all-important Phase 3.

Whether you realize it or not, you are an underpants gnome! Any time you read an inspiring news story, watch a YouTube video of somebody doing something amazing, or read a book that encourages you to make changes in your life , you are collecting underpants. In fact, most of us spend all day reading, watching, or listening to things and then going, “Whoa, it would be so cool if I could do that!” Then we dutifully move on to the next nugget of knowledge or inspiration that makes us say, “I’d love to do that some day!” Each time we do this, we are contributing to our pile of underpants . Whether it’s scanning a fitness site for advice on completing a marathon, reading a phrase book to better learn French, watching a video of somebody doing parkour, attending a TEDx conference and learning about volunteering opportunities in Africa, or even just reading this very book, we are all making mental notes of the things we’d like to do. This is the equivalent of collecting a pile of underpants.

Welcome to Phase 1.

Phase 3 is what you hope to accomplish after starting to build your pile: your life when you are firing on all cylinders. You are embarking on adventures, you are challenging yourself, you wake up excited, you feel purpose each and every day. Which brings me to my point: you must learn to dominate Phase 2. You can spend all day every day learning and collecting and researching. You could read my book so many times that you memorize it cover to cover. In fact, you could become the best information gatherer in the entire world, for hundreds of subjects. Gathering information is a great start—Phase 1 is a crucial part of the equation. After all, it’s tough to solve a problem if you don’t study it, and it’s tough to work out a solution without understanding what you hope to accomplish with it. However, if you only focus on Phase 1, all you’ll be left with is a big pile of underpants!

Phase 2 is about figuring out what to do with that knowledge you’ve been collecting so that you can advance to Phase 3, which could be health, love, happiness, adventure, or any combination of the things that remind us it’s a damn good day to be alive.

People who dominate Phase 2 are action-takers. They understand that collecting a few underpants and then immediately trying to do things with that knowledge is a much faster path to Phase 3 than just collecting more and more underpants!

Phase 2 is about learning, trying, failing, backtracking, trying again, and learning even more. Phase 2 is about going for your first hike despite not having the best gear. Phase 2 is about attempting your first push-up even if it’s ugly. Phase 2 is about trying to build your first mobile app instead of reading yet another book about programming. Phase 2 is about conversing on Skype with a native speaker of the language you are trying to learn (in broken phrases, if necessary) instead of reading yet another book on that language. Phase 2 is about approaching somebody you’d like to meet rather than reading yet another book on social skills.

The truth is that there is never a better time to start than right now. I can promise you that “eventually” never happens, and that “someday” never comes. I receive emails every day from people who say things like: “I’ve done the research, I know what I’m supposed to do, but I don’t have the motivation to start on my journey. Can you give me some please?”

Unfortunately, I can’t. The desire to change, live better, look better, feel better, and then have the guts to try things out and see what works (essentially, what you do with your pile of underpants) has to come from within you. Phase 2 is about the ability to fail repeatedly and continue to attempt new and different ways to succeed. As Winston Churchill declared, “Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.” And don’t worry, if the idea of failure or the unknown scares you, we’re going to solve that problem, too.

People often ask me how I built a life around my love of games and helping people get fit . It’s simple: I started. I was working a normal job, I lived a normal life, and then I read a few books to give myself the shot of confidence I needed to start making some changes. Then I started writing and helping people in my spare time. I didn’t spend more money on blogging classes, Internet marketing books, SEO strategy, or writing courses (that’s a lot of expensive underpants). Instead, I started writing crappy articles that got less and less crappy with each publication. I put my focus on helping people and learning how to make more of an impact with my writing, made plenty of mistakes, and learned from them. Years later, here I am.

Ask Jim Bathurst of BeastSkills.com how he became the amazing gymnastics guru he is today: he taught himself! He read some books and watched videos, he observed other people doing the things he wanted to do, and then he went out and tried to do them! He fell, busted up his body repeatedly, and struggled at the beginning, but over time and bit by bit he improved—and now he does one-handed handstands and teaches people this stuff for a living.

I’m going to let you in on a secret: spend 10 percent of your time and effort on Phase 1, and 90 percent on trying out the new things you are learning. Paint your first terrible picture. Write the first chapter of a book that will never be read. Ask somebody out and get shot down. Save money for a trip and book the damn thing. Start a crappy blog. Record a few awful podcasts. Pluck a few wrong notes on a guitar. Pronounce words incorrectly in a foreign language.

Because you’re actually doing something! Nothing comes of collecting more underpants other than a bigger pile of underpants. Until you learn what to do with them, you’ll only ever have a pile of underpants and never arrive at the happiness you are seeking. I cannot complete Phase 2 for you: You’re gonna have to get up off your ass and do that yourself.

“But, Steve,” you might be thinking, “I don’t know where to start.” As in any game, there will be times when you see many paths ahead of you, and you have no clue which one you need to take. I hear you, and I know that it can be overwhelming. However, the worst thing you can do is sit down on the ground and complain that you don’t know what to do. More information at this point isn’t going to help, either. That’s just more underpants! Instead, why not just make an educated guess, pick a path, and see how things work out? Think of it like becoming the main character in a Choose Your Own Adventure book—it’s tough to find out what happens if you don’t turn the page.

Speaking of books, my favorite example of this comes from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring. The gang is lost in a cave and stumbles across a path that leads in three different directions. After sitting in that spot for hours, unsure of which path to take, how do they eventually decide? Gandalf simply decides that the air doesn’t smell so foul down one of the paths.

When you are faced with a similar decision, just start. It’s going to be tough for us to save Middle Earth if we never leave the hobbit-hole, right? It’s going to be tough to hack the Matrix if we take the blue pill and do nothing. You can’t save the world, and you can’t find the end of the maze by sitting on your butt wondering which path to take. Research and a logical decision-making process helps, but sometimes you just have to move.

So do yourself a favor and don’t collect any more underpants for the time being. As you are reading, don’t be afraid to put it down and get started and come back to it as you find different paths along your journey. As Ellie says in Pixar’s Up, “Adventure is out there!” Let’s go find it.

Steve Kamb is the founder of Nerd Fitness , a business built out of his love for comic books and fitness. His book, Level Up Your Life: How to Unlock Adventure and Happiness by Becoming the Hero of Your Own Story , is available January 12, 2016.

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The Underpants Business

Season 2 E 17 • 12/16/1998

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• Infrastructure

Business Models- ‘South Park’ Style

• By Diana Mirakaj
• Last updated May 2, 2012

By Diana L. Mirakaj 

One of the finest satires of poor business planning comes from none other than South Park, the animated foul-mouth comedy series set in the high plains of suburban Denver. Created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the show mocks a full range of social, political, sexual and religious issues through the prepubescent, bathroom-humor–obsessed characters of Kyle, Stan, Kenny and Cartman.

 In one of its takeoffs on business, the South Park boys learned about corporate operations and profits from “underpants gnomes.” If you don’t recall the episode, or have never watched the show, trust me—it’s worth watching.

Struggling to complete a school assignment about business and profit, the boys are constantly distracted by a classmate, Tweak, an overcaffeinated son of a coffee shop owner. Tweak complains about gnomes sneaking into his room at night to steal his underwear.

The boys dismiss Tweak’s wild story, only later to discover that underpants gnomes are real and, surprisingly, they know about business. In fact, their stealing of little boys’ underpants is an enterprise activity.

Desperate to understand the inner workings of a corporation and how they make money, the boys ask the underpants gnomes for help. The gnomes are only too happy to reveal their secrets—a three-part plan:

Phase 1: Collect underpants.

Phase 3: Profit.

The boys don’t get it and probe further. Gnomes working on a giant pile of pilfered underwear go back and forth about how phase 1 is collecting underpants and phase 3 is profit, but they never explain phase 2.

Of course, phase 2 is execution—what they do with the underpants to add value to some customer, which then leads to revenue and profit. What Parker and Stone tapped into in the episode is something business leaders encounter everyday: ideas that, without a sound business plan, are merely ideas.

Diana Mirakaj

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What 'South Park' Can Teach You About Business

My favorite South Park episode is called “ Gnomes. ” Here’s the gist of the story, as I remember it.

Tweek’s underpants are being stolen. He has only one pair left.

How many loyal workers go about their business but have no idea why they do what they do?

Tweek invites the boys to sleep over and catch the thieves in the act. In the wee hours of the morning, the boys spot a gnome sneaking into Tweek’s bedroom and stealing his last pair of underpants.

“Why are you stealing my underpants?” Tweek shrieks. “That’s my last pair!”

The gnome replies,  “It’s all part of our business plan.”  The boys accept the gnome’s invitation to follow him to his headquarters and learn about their business.

When the boys arrive at the gnomes’ headquarters they see piles and piles of underpants, all shapes, sizes, colors, and styles. They are heaped in huge piles everywhere. Gnomes scurry to and fro, pushing enormous carts of underpants around.

“What are you doing with all these underpants?”  the boys ask.

The gnome confidently replies,  “Oh, this is just the collection phase: Phase 1.”

“What is Phase 2? ”  Now the boys are getting really curious.

The gnome doesn’t know, so he introduces them to the CEO gnome, who fires up a PowerPoint presentation. 

“We have a three-step plan for our business,”  the CEO gnome proudly says as he clicks to the first slide. It says,  “ Phase 1: Collect Underpants.”

He clicks for Phase 2, which we see has no strategy—just a giant question mark. Phase 2 is blank.

He clicks again for Phase 3, and the slide reads, “ Phase 3: Profit!!!” The gnomes cheer as the CEO reads this last step aloud. There is much rejoicing.

Too bad the gnomes will never reach Phase 3. Without Phase 2, they’re toast. Sound familiar?

Compelling Vision or Vague Concept?

How many loyal workers go about their business but have no idea why they do what they do? The gnomes themselves do not understand their own business plan, or why they steal underpants. This is identical to a business where team members do not understand the vision or how to contribute to it. That business, just like the Underpants Gnomes Underwear Enterprise, will never move to the next inflection point—not for all the underpants in the world.

We have a clarity issue here; how exactly do we move from stealing underpants to profit? That’s key—that’s really all that matters to get to the gnomes’ endgame. As it stands they simply have a cave full of underpants. No sales, marketing, distribution, target market, merchandising, you name it.

Profit? That’s a pipe dream. Ain’t gonna happen.

Do you know your company vision? Do your team members know it? Do they feel emotional about it?

The answer to those three questions can stall a company’s ability to create a SmartTribe and stunt their growth at the current inflection point. When my team does a Cultural Assessment at a company, often the first questions we ask each of the interviewees are about the company vision and their alignment with it. We’re not looking to see if the vision is almighty and powerful. We’re looking to see if there is one at all, if people can articulate it in their own words, and if they are engaged by it. We’re looking for clarity. It’s that simple . . . and yet that difficult.

The 3 Types of Clarity

Clarity is crucial in both vision and communication. Clarity can also be an act of omission—what we choose to be explicit and implicit about. This choice sets up the person we’re interacting with to succeed or struggle—and sometimes this person is oneself.

Being clear is essential to leading. When we’re clear we feel aligned and energized, and our team feels motivated because they have explicitly stated expectations. So why is being clear sometimes hard? Because being truly clear means we need to take the time to discover what we need, to articulate it clearly, and to be sure the other party understood our communication.

The meaning of the communication is what the other party understood, not what you said, or intended to say, or “really meant.” You are responsible for making sure that the receiver understood, and if they didn’t, to try, try again.

Clarity has three domains:

• Clarity of our words (saying what we truly mean or expressing what we truly need)
• Clarity  of our vision and plan (where we are now, where we want to go, and how we are going to get there)
• Clarity  of our intentions and energy (embodying and modeling the outcomes we want for our team)

Let’s look at clarity of vision and plan today, since that’s where the gnomes are struggling.

Clarity of Our Vision and Plan

In my previous book, Rules for Renegades, I talked about how an MBA is optional but a GSD (Get Stuff Done) is essential. To ensure you reach the next inflection point it helps to make your brand = results. Mastering the skill of clarity in terms of communicating your vision and plan is crucial so your team will know where you are now, where you want to go, and how you plan to get there.

For example, the Underpants Gnomes would’ve benefited from a plan that included exactly how, once collected, the underpants would be marketed and distributed to retail/web/catalog outlets, how orders would be fulfilled, how annual revenue targets would be achieved, what the costs of goods sold would be, and more in order to get to their glorious profit goal.

Do you know your company vision? Do your team members know it?

To take this a step further, a clear mission, vision, and values statement will grab hold of your team’s emotions and provide motivation to excel. 

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"Gnomes" is the seventeenth episode of Season Two , and the 30th overall episode of South Park . It first aired on December 16, 1998. [1]

Synopsis [ ]

Cartman , Stan , Kyle and Kenny are assigned to write a report with Tweek , the very nervous and highly caffeinated boy who insists gnomes are stealing his underpants. [1]

Mr. Garrison is warned by the school board that he will lose his job if he cannot prove that he teaches his class about the current events, so he makes them all write a report. Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny are paired with the jittery and stressed out Tweek. Mr. Hat threatens the boys with violence if their report does not "kick-ass".

Meanwhile, at Tweek Bros. Coffeehouse , a representative of Harbucks attempts to get Mr. Tweak to sell his coffee shop for a Cramsonite briefcase, to which Mr. Tweek declines. The representative then offers him $500,000. Mr. Tweek again declines. Angered, the representative states that he will open Harbucks right next to Tweek Bros. Despite the fact that it will likely put Mr. Tweek out of business.

After school, boys go to Tweek's house for the night to write about the "Underpants Gnomes" that are stealing Tweek's underpants. Mr. Tweek, believing that Tweek merely loses his underpants, tells the boys that they could write about the big corporate bulldozer trying to put his coffee shop out of business, but Mrs. Tweak objects.

At night, Mr. Tweek comes in and discovers the boys have not done a report, but gives them a report he wrote for them about big corporations. While he is talking, the boys miss the gnomes that sneak in and take Tweek's Underpants.

The next day, the boys give "their" presentation to the South Park committee. While Mr. Garrison sees through the ruse, the committee believes this is the boys' original work and subsequently decide to side the town to the boys' "cause". Mr. Garrison then tells the boys to go with this to the end or else.

The town committee goes to Tweek Bros. Coffeehouse and sees the huge Harbucks opening next door. The committee assures Mr. Tweak that they will fight for his coffeeshop's survival by taking the fight to the mayor's office . Mayor McDaniels says she cannot just force them out so she decides to make the town vote on Prop. 10 and see what happens from there.

The boys soon end up on talk shows and advertisements as the poster boys for the anti-big business bandwagon. Mr. Tweak is thrilled by the attention they are getting, but Mrs. Tweak is disgusted with the idea of using kids in political ads to promote and sell political beliefs. She promptly states she will have no more to do with the situation.

The mayor decides to host a debate in front of the competing coffeehouses and then host a vote there the next day. The committee asks the boys to write a 5-minute speech for the debate. The boys again go to Tweek's house to write the speech but do not know anyone who knows about corporations. To everyone's surprise, the Underpants Gnomes appear, stealing Tweek's last pair of underpants. Stan asks a gnome why they steal underpants to which the gnome says, "Stealing underpants big business!" Seeing an opportunity to find someone who knows about corporations, the boys accept his offer to follow the gnome home.

In their village , the boys ask how their corporation works. The way the gnomes make money is rather pointless. Phase One: collect underpants. Phase Three: profit. When they ask what Phase Two is, it is revealed that there is no Phase Two. The boys are confused about what phase two means and ask if they know anything about business. They tell them for a small price - underpants.

At the vote the next day, the boys reveal they did not write the report, and explain the importance of big corporations. Without them, we would not have computers or cars. Even Harbucks started as a small business and because of its excellent product, became a big business. This speech leaves the crowd stunned until Mrs. Tweak applauds them and joins them on stage. Mrs. Tweak tells the crowd that they kept complaining and protesting but never bothered to try Harbuck's coffee. With this, the crowd, and even Mr. Tweak, tries and loves the coffee and admit its superiority over Tweek Bros. coffee. The Harbucks representative then offers Mr. Tweak the job of running the new Harbucks store, which Mr. Tweak accepts.

References [ ]

• ↑ 1.0 1.1 Gnomes (Season 2, Episode 17) . southparkstudios.com.

Underpants Gnomes • Tweek Tweak • Richard Tweak • Mrs. Tweak • Tweek Bros. Coffeehouse • Harbucks • " Underpants Gnomes Work Song "

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South Park: The Complete Second Season

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Victor Mukhin

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Title : Active carbons as nanoporous materials for solving of environmental problems

However, up to now, the main carriers of catalytic additives have been mineral sorbents: silica gels, alumogels. This is obviously due to the fact that they consist of pure homogeneous components SiO2 and Al2O3, respectively. It is generally known that impurities, especially the ash elements, are catalytic poisons that reduce the effectiveness of the catalyst. Therefore, carbon sorbents with 5-15% by weight of ash elements in their composition are not used in the above mentioned technologies. However, in such an important field as a gas-mask technique, carbon sorbents (active carbons) are carriers of catalytic additives, providing effective protection of a person against any types of potent poisonous substances (PPS). In ESPE “JSC "Neorganika" there has been developed the technology of unique ashless spherical carbon carrier-catalysts by the method of liquid forming of furfural copolymers with subsequent gas-vapor activation, brand PAC. Active carbons PAC have 100% qualitative characteristics of the three main properties of carbon sorbents: strength - 100%, the proportion of sorbing pores in the pore space – 100%, purity - 100% (ash content is close to zero). A particularly outstanding feature of active PAC carbons is their uniquely high mechanical compressive strength of 740 ± 40 MPa, which is 3-7 times larger than that of  such materials as granite, quartzite, electric coal, and is comparable to the value for cast iron - 400-1000 MPa. This allows the PAC to operate under severe conditions in moving and fluidized beds.  Obviously, it is time to actively develop catalysts based on PAC sorbents for oil refining, petrochemicals, gas processing and various technologies of organic synthesis.

Victor M. Mukhin was born in 1946 in the town of Orsk, Russia. In 1970 he graduated the Technological Institute in Leningrad. Victor M. Mukhin was directed to work to the scientific-industrial organization "Neorganika" (Elektrostal, Moscow region) where he is working during 47 years, at present as the head of the laboratory of carbon sorbents.     Victor M. Mukhin defended a Ph. D. thesis and a doctoral thesis at the Mendeleev University of Chemical Technology of Russia (in 1979 and 1997 accordingly). Professor of Mendeleev University of Chemical Technology of Russia. Scientific interests: production, investigation and application of active carbons, technological and ecological carbon-adsorptive processes, environmental protection, production of ecologically clean food.   

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