Webinar: Post Growth Business
Listen to the kōrero from Jennifer Wilkins, Heliocene (Aotearoa New Zealand), Erinch Sahan, Doughnut Economics Action Lab (UK), and Melanie Rieback, Radically Open Security (Netherlands) as they discuss ideas on the role business can play in a degrowth transition, redesigning business towards a post-growth economy and post-growth entrepreneurship.
Jennifer reminded us that if the BAU economy grows to 2050, we will irreversible overshoot environmental boundaries and lose the holocene conditions to which humanity thrive. She says there is an alternative path with a changed global operating system based on sufficiency. We must dismantle the rules of BAU and build a post growth economy from the ground up. See Jennifer’s slides here.
Erinch shared about how business can be transformed through levers of change: regulation, enlightened leaderhsip, better metrics and targets, and making more effective business case to ensure a longer term holistic purpose not immediate financial extraction. He also reminded us of the work of Marjorie Kelly and the layer of business design: purpose, networks, governance, ownership and the financial model underpinning it. See Erinch’s slides here and an interesting report on alternative ownership enterprises he shared on the call.
Melanie articulated how 'profit' has double meaning - both Reinvestable margin, and financial extraction. This was a big aha moment. When used to mean financial extraction, it is green washing. The triple bottom line should be People, Planet, Reinvestable margin.
She posed the question, how do we actually lock the financial value of the company inside the companies in ways that it can no longer be financially extracted? She talked about asset locks, steward ownership, golden shares, compensation caps.
