Our coastlines, beaches, and oceans have become overrun with plastic pollution, a crisis that threatens everyone’s quality of life. Luckily, individuals and organizations have been working hard to clean up our waterways and innovate to prevent plastic from ever reaching our oceans. Now, it’s everyone’s turn.
We spoke with Alex Schulze, Co-Founder and CEO at 4ocean, about how this organization is helping to put an end to the ocean plastic crisis and creating a sustainable future for our planet.
What was the “spark” that inspired you to start your organization?
The spark that ignited 4ocean came from a surfing trip to Bali with friend and co-founder, Andrew Cooper. We were out there to surf, but what we found was a crazy amount of plastic. It was everywhere — in the water, on the beaches, even entangled in the reefs. It was heartbreaking to see such an awesome place overwhelmed by pollution. We realized that if we didn’t do something, this problem would only get worse.
That trip was our wake-up call. We knew we had to take action, and that’s how 4ocean was born in January 2017. Our mission was clear: clean the ocean and create a sustainable future for our planet.
What do you consider to be your biggest success? Can you share any stories of the impact your work has had that have surprised you?
Our biggest success has to be reaching the milestone of removing over 38 million pounds of trash from oceans and coastlines. It’s a testament to the hard work of our dedicated team and the incredible support from our global community.
One story that stands out is from our cleanup operations in Guatemala. We partnered with local communities along the Rio Motagua, one of the most polluted rivers in the world, to remove plastic waste and provide job opportunities. The impact was incredible — not only did we clean up the environment, but we also helped improve the quality of life for many families. The locals were incredibly engaged and passionate about restoring their environment, and it was amazing to see the community come together to tackle such a massive problem. Seeing the smiles on their faces and knowing that we made a difference in their lives was incredibly rewarding. It’s moments like those that remind us why we do what we do.
How can protecting oceans and waterways help make the world better?
Protecting our oceans and waterways is crucial for the health of our planet. Oceans are the lungs of Earth, producing over half of the world’s oxygen and absorbing a significant amount of carbon dioxide. They regulate our climate, provide food and livelihoods for billions of people, and support a diverse range of marine life. When we protect our oceans, we’re not just preserving a vital ecosystem, we’re also safeguarding our future. Clean oceans mean healthier communities, more sustainable economies, and a better quality of life for everyone. It’s all interconnected, and by taking care of our oceans, we’re taking care of ourselves.
What are some of the challenges you typically face in carrying out your purpose?
One of the biggest challenges we face is the sheer scale of the plastic pollution problem. Billions of pounds of plastic enter the ocean every year, and it’s a constant battle to keep up with the influx. Another challenge is raising awareness and changing behaviours. It’s not enough to just clean up the trash; we need to address the root causes and prevent plastic from entering the ocean in the first place. This requires a collective effort from individuals, businesses, and governments. Additionally, operating in remote and underserved areas can be logistically challenging, but it’s essential to reach these high-impact zones.
Despite these challenges, we’re committed to our mission and continuously innovate to overcome obstacles.
Are there any upcoming initiatives or projects you’d like to share?
We just recently launched our partnership program, where virtually any business has the opportunity to implement a sustainability program and partner with us to clean plastic from the ocean. This has been critical for our cleanup expansion and ongoing cleanup efforts.
What can people do to help support your mission?
The best way to support our mission is for people to get involved in local cleanups, wherever they may be. Not everyone lives by the ocean, but cleaning up rivers, lakes, and other waterways can stop the flow of trash out to the ocean and help raise awareness about the ocean plastic crisis.
We encourage everyone to track their monthly plastic consumption and look for ways to cut down on single-use plastics in their daily lives. Even a small change can make a big difference. Look for sustainable products to help make the transition, so you can start to live a life that is plastic-free or even plastic-negative!
For people who want to make a big difference right away, I’d recommend joining our Bracelet of the Month Club program. Every month, we send out a limited-edition bracelet dedicated to a marine animal like turtles, whales, and sharks. Each bracelet pulls 10 pounds of ocean trash for double the impact, plus includes VIP early access to new products, mystery gifts and surprises, and updates from 4ocean about how your support is helping us put an end to the ocean plastic crises.
We are also looking for businesses and brands that are looking to partner with us to implement sustainability programs and help us clean the ocean.
Social purpose businesses have the power to create a better world. Unfortunately, our well-established systems often hinder would-be changemakers from taking the leap. By collaborating and educating others, we can change our economic thinking and inspire those interested in social purpose to act.
We spoke with Mike Rowlands, President & CEO at Junxion Strategy and one of the Founding Champions of the Canadian Purpose Economy Project, about how the Project is uniting businesses to accelerate Canada’s transition to a purpose economy.
Canadian Purpose Economy Project co-founder and ‘Purpose Champion’ Mike Rowlands addresses The Partnership Conference, October 2023.
What inspired the founders of CPEP to start advocating for the Wellbeing Economy?
We’re all veterans of the last few decades’ work toward corporate social responsibility, sustainability, and social impact. While we all see and appreciate the vast societal gains that capitalism has delivered, we also see the deep challenges that exist under unfettered capitalism: income inequalities, the climate crisis, biodiversity loss, social injustices, and more.
We began by exploring how we might encourage more companies to take up a social purpose as the reason they exist. A social purpose business is a company whose enduring reason for being is to create a better world. It is an engine for good, creating social benefits by the very act of doing business. Its growth is a positive force in society, and social purpose businesses do well by doing good.
There’s a strong business case for social purpose businesses: companies benefit from higher customer loyalty, staff engagement and retention, and even higher rates of innovation.
It wasn’t long before we started asking, “How might we develop a social purpose economy in Canada?” As in, an economy powered by the pursuit of long-term wellbeing for all, in which business, regulatory, and financial systems foster an equitable, flourishing, resilient future.
We’re inspired by the possibilities a social purpose economy might bring for all Canadians when collective wellbeing is centred.
What do you consider to be your biggest success as an advocate and professional in this space? Can you share any stories of the impact your work has had that have surprised you?
We have a long way to go before we meet our vision that 25% of Canadian businesses have taken up a social purpose, are authentically operationalizing it, and are collaborating with others to achieve it. But we’ve made some great headway.
Perhaps our biggest success is the recently-launched “A Call to Purpose: Building a Canadian Purpose Economy.” This is a letter co-written by six of Canada’s most prominent CEOs calling on their peers to embrace social purpose in their businesses. Nearly 100 other CEOs have endorsed it, and many leading thinkers (who don’t happen to occupy CEO positions) are also supporting it.
It’s gratifying and exciting to see the names on that list, which includes some of Canada’s most impressive corporations and brands. The credibility that group brings to our vision and mission is significant, which is a meaningful accomplishment in itself.
There have been many surprises in this work, but two in particular come to mind. The first is the credit many CEOs give to their social purpose for inspiring significant innovation and extension of their companies. Whole new enterprises have been established simply because executive teams were able to look differently at the role and scope of their businesses. Secondly, it’s been a very pleasant surprise to learn of deep interest in social purpose in companies that we expected would be the laggards. Some of the most ardent supporters of social purpose are leading some of the most traditional businesses, including natural resource-based companies that are so important to the Canadian economy.
How do you feel that shifting to a Wellbeing Economy will help make the world better?
There’s an old, familiar saying in business: “What gets measured gets managed.” When all our attention is focused on financial metrics (i.e. revenue and margins at the company level, GDP and household incomes at the level of the economy), we attend to financial returns. We too easily ignore “externalities” like carbon emissions, insufficient wages, and erosion of the living systems on which we most deeply rely.
By shifting our thinking toward human and planetary wellbeing, we avail ourselves of an entirely different suite of metrics — new, better measures of a more holistic definition of success.
I could get all philosophical and talk about the history of economic thinking and the problems of a reductionist, Western scientific worldview, but it’s simpler and more intuitive than that: surely the very purpose of society is to assure our collective wellbeing! And our economy exists not to serve only those who hold wealth, but society as a whole, so our economics simply must be refined to focus on delivering wellbeing for all.
Consider the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) — the world’s answer to the question, “What must we do in order to live together on Earth sustainably?” Each of the SDGs points to a profound enhancement of planetary and human wellbeing, and they were unanimously agreed upon by 192 UN member nations. These must guide our economic thinking from the level of national economic policy to the decisions in executive suites.
Canadian Purpose Economy Project co-founders and ‘Purpose Champions’ Mike Rowlands and Coro Strandberg speak to Social Impact Professionals Canada, November 2023.
What are some of the challenges you typically face in advocating for the Wellbeing Economy?
The greatest challenge in advocating for a Wellbeing Economy is the status quo. Many powerful forces benefit from “the way it’s always been.” So, how do we inspire new thinking?
There’s a great quote attributed to Buckminster Fuller: instead of changing the old system, “build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” That’s essentially what we’re aiming to do. By introducing new ways of thinking about economic systems — starting with the way the world does business — we’ll introduce a new system anchored in metrics that prioritize human and planetary wellbeing.
Of course, a great many people were educated and have built their lives, enterprises, and ideas of success in an old system, an old paradigm. Can we “teach old dogs new tricks?” Looks like there are ways we can, including attaching social purpose to leaders’ sense of impact and legacy, showcasing “traditional” businesses that are embracing the new paradigm, and uplifting the success stories of those who are charting a different path in their work and careers.
Are there any upcoming initiatives or projects related to your work/the Wellbeing Economy you’d like to share?
We’re definitely keen to continue generating support for “A Call to Purpose.” The more people endorse and support that letter, the more momentum it will build as we engage CEOs and business leaders across the country, as well as other economic actors and decision-makers.
Next, though, we’re keen to equip professional advisors to support companies that want to make a transition to social purpose. We’re aiming to develop a new credential for corporate social responsibility professionals to help with that.
We’re also working with industry and trade associations, encouraging them to adopt a social purpose, and then we encourage their members to do so as well. This could really amplify and accelerate this work.
What can people do to help spread the word about or take action toward transitioning to the Wellbeing Economy? How can they support your mission?
The Canadian Purpose Economy Project exists to accelerate the transition to the purpose economy. In order to engage national ecosystem actors, we need the support of equally ambitious funders, partners, and amplifiers.
A handful of generous sponsors have supported our work to date. We’re keen to meet with others.
We’re already partnering extensively with conveners, educators, associations, networks, and others to advance aspects of our work. Again, we’re keen to welcome other partners into the work we’re doing across our 10 levers of change.
People can join the social purpose community by signing up for our newsletter and referring associations in their network to us so we can accelerate social purpose in business through their memberships.And finally, we’re grateful to have this opportunity to amplify the work that’s going on under our Project banner. The more conversations we can spark, the more action we can inspire. And the more action we can inspire, the faster we’ll all benefit from a purpose economy.
Sustainable development and purpose are intrinsically linked, and organizational purpose lends clarity and direction to the role companies can play in making a positive impact. Yet, business-as-usual and profit-centric models are hard to dethrone, especially when belief gaps exist around the power of purpose in business.
We spoke with Pat Dwyer, Founder of The Purpose Business, about how this company is getting more businesses in Asia on board with organizational purpose and propelling them toward a sustainable future.
Pat Dwyer, Founder and Director of the Purpose Business and Purpose and Sustainability Leader.
What inspired you to start advocating for the Wellbeing Economy?
In 2015, when The Purpose Business (TPB) was established in Hong Kong, the concept of organizational purpose was a pipe dream. At best, it was seen as trivial and no more than a marketing ploy. Despite strong headwinds, we were resolute in our conviction that sustainable business practices and the overarching goal of enhancing the wellbeing of people and planet can only be achieved by starting with clarity and activating a company’s intrinsic “why.”
Our journey began in the early days of corporate social responsibility (CSR), then the best expression of business contribution to social good. We recognized CSR as a first step was largely limited and didn’t encompass the business model transformation necessary for sustainable business practices to thrive. We saw an educational and belief gap around the role and power of purpose in business, presenting us with an exciting opportunity to lead the way in integrating purpose-driven practices in Asia.
We are determined to demonstrate that purpose is a critical lever for strategic change, not a peripheral consideration, and we are committed to guiding leaders to bridge the gap between corporate aspirations and action in order to propel organizations toward a sustainable future.
What do you consider to be your biggest success as an advocate and professional in this space? Can you share any stories of the impact your work has had that have surprised you?
TPB was born out of our genuine belief that businesses in Asia will one day be responsible business exemplars, surpassing the most admired Western companies. Within our first two years, TPB was working with Asia’s most established homegrown brands, listed companies, and multinationals who wanted localized impact. We’ve witnessed remarkable shifts in our clients over the past eight years, moving from extreme conservatism to viewing sustainability as a strategic imperative.
We’re also experiencing, in real-time, the positive impacts of our efforts to advance organizational purpose as a tool for responsible businesses in Asia, both through our client work and educational outreach. We are particularly proud of our “Purpose and Values” work with the Philippines-based company, Universal Robina Corporation (URC), one of the largest branded consumer food and beverage product companies in the Philippines. Together with our strategic partner Within People, we helped URC to craft its purpose statement and related values and ambition to be a beacon for the company as a responsible business actor.
We knew from the start that raising awareness and investing in education for our wider audience — focused on corporate sustainability imperatives and the critical role of organizational purpose in driving change — had to be a key part of our offerings. We were among the first to introduce orientation sessions on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Asia, hosting events in Hong Kong and Manila to inspire companies to align with these global goals.
Part of our ongoing educational offerings include our signature “Breakfast with Purpose” events, which feature highly engaging speakers and facilitate intimate dialogue touching on some of the most pressing sustainability issues.
How do you feel that shifting to a Wellbeing Economy will help make the world better?
Sustainable development is intrinsically linked to purpose. If sustainability is about securing an equitable future that espouses wellbeing for all people and planet, then organizational purpose brings clarity to the role that businesses play in delivering positive impact. The cost of clinging to short-term profit maximization is untenable. Industry leaders who understand this are stepping forward, using organizational purpose as a strategic tool to stay ahead and align with societal and systemic pressures.
Amidst the complexities of sustainability, purpose provides clarity and direction. It’s not just about ratings or superficial metrics; purpose positions us to make better investment decisions, rethinking business models that have traditionally been profit-centric. This shift allows us to move beyond shareholder supremacy, focusing on the wellbeing of all stakeholders. A truly purposeful organization is the gold standard for enterprises aligned with a sustainable future — it offers a blueprint for businesses to thrive while contributing positively to the planet and its people.
The Purpose Business (TPB) conducting one of many “The Why” and “The What” of Organizational Purpose sessions with senior corporate leaders in Asia. This session took place in Singapore.
What are some of the challenges you typically face in advocating for the Wellbeing Economy?
Old habits die hard, and this is even truer for entrenched business-as-usual models. Globally, there’s broad consensus that our current path is unsustainable, and while there’s general agreement on what sustainability requires, the path to achieving it is less clear. Organizational purpose offers a way forward, serving as a moral compass for businesses and prompting crucial decisions, particularly at the C-suite level. However, this transformation challenges deep-seated successes built around traditional leadership styles.
Implementing purpose as a core strategy involves rethinking business models and operational processes, and this requires an overhaul of everything we currently know. Resistance to change, whether due to skepticism or inertia, is a natural obstacle, especially when nothing seems to be broken. We know that ultimately we need to shift business models to longer-term thinking — and that includes accepting the cost of capital, investing in longer-term horizons, and non-stop education and effective communication.
Measuring the impact of purpose-driven initiatives demands a mindset shift in the way we think of reward structures and returns on investment, along with the utmost transparency. While financial metrics are well-established for traditional business models, quantifying long-term societal and environmental impacts remains a challenge. Developing robust metrics for these areas is crucial for validating the approach and encouraging wider adoption.
In Asia, advocating for purpose is further challenged by continued population and economic growth, which translates into an increasing demand for resources and energy. As the world’s largest energy consumer with an industry-heavy economy, companies in Asia face the complex challenge of balancing growing energy needs with the imperative to decarbonize.
Are there any upcoming initiatives or projects related to your work/the Wellbeing Economy you’d like to share?
As we live up to our purpose of guiding leaders to elevate businesses in Asia as a force for good, we intend to be the convening entity of Asia’s brain trust of purpose in action. This means engaging with, learning from, and facilitating the open exchange of experience and learnings, as well as addressing the challenges that purpose transformation confronts in our ever-growing markets.
To this end, we were thrilled to kick off 2024 with a webinar on how to put purpose into action, featuring case studies and best practice sharing from purpose-driven companies from the UK and Asia.
This is just the first of several educational events we have planned for 2024, with purpose and sustainability at the forefront.
What can people do to help spread the word about or take action toward transitioning to the Wellbeing Economy? How can they support your mission?
It’s essential to first understand and internalize the concept of organizational purpose. This is a radical shift away from business-as-usual models. It puts aside profit maximization as the key driver for business and considers how a company contributes to the broader wellbeing of people and planet. How is shared stakeholder value created to ensure resilience and productivity for generations to come?
People can advocate for this shift at every level, but it’s particularly crucial at the C-suite level. Leadership must champion, articulate, and live purpose in every decision and policy. This isn’t just about having a purpose statement; it’s about evaluating how much of your business is shifting toward sustainability and purpose, and how deeply these values are embedded in your operations and culture.
Ultimately, whether we are thinking through our lens as individuals or as employees, it’s about aligning with the greater good — shifting the focus from “what’s in it for me” to “what’s in it for all.”
Overcoming today’s challenges and building a better life for all requires economic and systems-level change. To mainstream approaches that place wellbeing at the centre, governments need frameworks and objectives that align with our greatest needs and provide opportunities for everyone to flourish.
We spoke with Dr. Gary Gillespie, Director and Scottish Government Chief Economic Adviser, about how the Scottish Government is following a wellbeing framework to pursue a just transition to a green economy and reduce inequalities.
What inspired you to start advocating for the Wellbeing Economy?
My advocacy of the Wellbeing Economy reflects, in part, a strong political desire in Scotland to put the Wellbeing Economy as a key focus of the Government’s objectives. This has been reflected in the continued evolution of economic strategy in Scotland since 2015; the growing recognition of the combined challenges of rising inequality, climate, and nature loss; and the interdependencies and need to frame a system response which focuses on collective wellbeing across economic, social, and environmental domains, consistent with safeguarding future generations.
As an economist advising and working in government, it has been great to work toward the Wellbeing Economy, drawing on new thinking and approaches from across academia and other countries. In my role, my focus on the Wellbeing Economy is through the lens of the economy. It is clear we need a successful economy to deliver our wider outcomes — providing opportunities for employment, good jobs, income, and participation across the country while supporting our transition to net zero, reducing inequality, protecting and restoring nature, and investing in public goods.
Although the Wellbeing Economy is often viewed as a new or novel approach, its roots can be traced across many areas. Adam Smith, Scottish political economist from the 17th century — often regarded as the father figure of modern economics — argued that governments should be viewed in direct proportion to the extent to which they improve the happiness or wellbeing of their citizens. Therefore, advocacy of the Wellbeing Economy reflects a tradition of seeking to improve citizens’ outcomes, which I am happy to continue.
What do you consider to be your biggest success as an advocate and professional in this space? Can you share any stories of the impact your work has had that have surprised you?
I have been surprised at how quickly the idea and concept of the Wellbeing Economy has developed as an operating framework for governments and also as a catalyst for broader change across communities.
Personally, I would highlight Scotland’s role in the creation of Wellbeing Economy Governments (WEGo), alongside Iceland and New Zealand in 2018, the expansion of the group, and the ongoing international interest in governments working together to achieve similar aims.
Scotland’s National Performance Framework, which was updated in 2018, with its central purpose to enhance wellbeing and provide opportunities for all to flourish, is now set in legislation and is regarded as Scotland’s wellbeing framework. This is also reflected in the cross-party political interest and growing consensus on this approach in Scotland and internationally.
I would also highlight the “Why governments should prioritize well-being” TED Talk by our then–First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, given in 2019, which has had over 2.5 million views.
Another major highlight was the appointment of a Scottish Government Minister, Cabinet Secretary for Wellbeing Economy, Fair Work and Energy in 2023, which reflects the centrality of this approach within the Scottish Government and its three missions: equality, opportunity, and community. The current focus is on mainstreaming this approach, working with the business community, and establishing an expert advisory group to shape this work.
Finally, the continuing work of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) indeveloping frameworks and sharing policies to support the Centre on Well-being, Inclusion, Sustainability and Equal Opportunity (WISE), alongside the growing interest of the World Health Organisation (WHO) in this area who have reviewed the different approaches taken by WEGo countries, is another noteworthy success.
How do you feel that shifting to a Wellbeing Economy will help make the world better?
At the heart of the Wellbeing Economy approach is the recognition of the need to change our economic model, given the broader challenges we face. The recognition of the interconnected nature of those challenges means economic transformation is critical if we are to meet our global climate and biodiversity obligations and secure a safe world for current and future generations. These crises are already changing the global economy and how we live, so the only constant is change. We, therefore, need to play our part in pursuing a just transition to a green economy while maximizing the economic opportunities it brings and making sure those opportunities are accessed and shared fairly across society. High levels of inequality and poverty are incompatible with a strong, resilient economy and society. Therefore, achieving a Wellbeing Economy will improve outcomes for people and planet.
Scotland joined forces with Slovenia, Sweden, Costa Rica, New Zealand, and Australia at the first meeting to establish the Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WEAll).
What are some of the challenges you typically face in advocating for the Wellbeing Economy?
One of the biggest challenges is defining the vision of the Wellbeing Economy so that it can be easily understood by different people, and the benefits can be recognized. We have been working in partnership with the business community in Scotland to develop a clearer description of what the Wellbeing Economy means for businesses as they are crucial for our success.
Change of this scale is by its nature extremely challenging, be that for large institutions and governments, small businesses, or individual citizens. Therefore, changing how we think about problems — drawing on system theory — and recognizing the importance of place and community participation, and ultimately, changing cultural norms, are crucial.
Are there any upcoming initiatives or projects related to your work/the Wellbeing Economy you’d like to share?
What can people do to help spread the word about or take action toward transitioning to the Wellbeing Economy? How can they support your mission?
People should feel empowered, as they are needed to take part for any change to happen. There are lots of community-led initiatives happening all over the world making real progress on building a Wellbeing Economy. International organizations and initiatives like the Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WEAll) and the Doughnut Economics Action Lab (DEAL) are doing great work at both community and national levels. Here in the UK, we also have organizations like Carnegie UK and the Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES) which are driving action toward wellbeing-focused policies in both national and local governments.The Wellbeing Economy Governments (WEGo) are showing the influence of small countries working together for a common cause, but, ultimately, we can all contribute and need people to be catalysts for change. All journeys start with a first step, so feel empowered to engage, question, and challenge. Think about changing one thing in your life or business as every action has an impact and leaves a trace.
In the battle for a sustainable future, negative messages tend to steal the spotlight. Folks are constantly barraged with what they should not do rather than being shown practical examples of active steps they can take to make a positive difference.
We spoke with Roger Higman, Director of Network of Wellbeing, about how this network is connecting people passionate about wellbeing for all and providing tangible ways to contribute to a sustainable world.
What inspired you to start advocating for the Wellbeing Economy?
I have over 30 years of experience campaigning on environmental issues. Previously, I worked in a variety of positions at Friends of the Earth in London, where I ended up with the responsibility for integrating messages on economics, fairness, and the environment into a coherent whole.
In doing that, I came to the conclusion that many of the debates that we engaged in (and even the structure of our organizations) focused almost exclusively on the problems we were concerned with: climate change, biodiversity loss, chemical pollution, and so on. As a result, it was easier for us to say what we were against than what we were for. Moreover, those positive visions that had been developed, such as sustainable development, tended to focus on what society should be like rather than what individuals could aspire to. As such, they were difficult to explain and often left a vacuum in which the public heard only negative messages, like “don’t drive,” “don’t fly,” “don’t eat meat,” “don’t use plastics,” and so on.
So, when I started learning about wellbeing, I was hooked. Here was something we could all aspire to that needn’t cost the Earth. Looking deeper, especially at the evidence from positive psychology, I realized that if we directed societies toward wellbeing, we could create fairer, sustainable civilizations through which everybody could thrive.
For the last nine years, I have been the Director of the Network of Wellbeing (NOW). Our mission is to connect people, support projects, and inspire action for the wellbeing of people and planet. That has enabled me to host debates on the Wellbeing Economy and create practical projects that give an idea of what a Wellbeing Economy might look like in practice.
What do you consider to be your biggest success as an advocate and professional in this space? Can you share any stories of the impact your work has had that have surprised you?
Three things.
Firstly, we’ve brought the UK’s nascent wellbeing movement together through events in ways that hadn’t previously been done. In 2017, and then again in 2019, we organized two Building Wellbeing Together weekends at the lovely Hawkwood College in Stroud. It demonstrated that there were people across the UK and beyond who thought along similar lines and was a factor in the setting up of the Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WEAll).
Secondly, in 2017, we set up the Share Shed — A Library of Things. This enables people to borrow things they only use occasionally, thereby enabling people to pursue their dreams while saving them money and reducing the consumption of natural resources. A film made at the launch was viewed over 1.5 million times by people all over the world. In 2021, the Share Shed went mobile as the world’s first travelling library of things. It now serves seven towns weekly and is a testament to how a new Wellbeing Economy could help people meet their needs at lower cost to themselves and the planet.
Thirdly, you may not believe it but, in 2018, someone gave us a retreat centre! Nestled on a hillside in the Devon countryside, Eden Rise comprises two linked 19th-century barns that have been converted to sleep up to 20 people. It is our very own haven for wellbeing and is used for all sorts of yoga, meditation, and personal development retreats.
Attendees at this ShareFest in 2018 took action to prevent waste by repairing broken items.
How do you feel that shifting to a Wellbeing Economy will help make the world better?
When we focus on wellbeing, we focus on what truly matters to people. That means we factor in the importance of fairness, work-life balance, public space and public institutions, vibrant and supportive communities, and respect for natural ecosystems and the benefits they provide. The world has enough for everyone’s needs but not for the greed of those who want it all. By focusing on wellbeing, we can meet people’s needs — the physical ones, for fresh air, water, food, shelter, and so on; and the emotional needs for connection, love, friendship, meaning, purpose, and more. And we can do so in ways that preserve the Earth so that future generations can meet their needs too.
What are some of the challenges you typically face in advocating for the Wellbeing Economy?
The world is the way it is because somebody benefits from it. There are vast corporations and their shareholders with an interest in the resource-intensive, polluting, unfair economy we have now. These institutions have a stranglehold on political discourse and will resist change. Yet, we can subvert and resist that stranglehold. By discussing and demonstrating what could be, we show people that a better world can exist. By demanding and pressing for changes to policy and practices, we bring that better world into existence.
In 2017, the Network of Wellbeing brought many of the UK’s leading wellbeing practitioners together to help build a movement for a better world.
Are there any upcoming initiatives or projects related to your work/the Wellbeing Economy you’d like to share?
This year, we’re focusing on our offer to our audience. We have almost 30,000 people following us, including over 5,000 who have signed up for our monthly newsletter. We know that these people have a passion for wellbeing and many work professionally to deliver it in practice. We’re working to improve our offer to them. We know they want more online events (because they’ve told us) so we’re working to set these up.
But, we’re also keen to explore whether we can inspire these people to act — by connecting them with each other. At the moment, we struggle to reach our audience on social media. The algorithms seem to be against us. For example, over 700 people have signed up for our Building Wellbeing Together group on Facebook, but a typical post is only seen by about 50. So we’re exploring whether we can set up our own online social network. We hope that, by connecting people with like-minded, passionate people, they will become advocates for our mission and, as a result, a host of new ideas will bloom.
What can people do to help spread word about or take action toward transitioning to the Wellbeing Economy? How can they support your mission?
Our current economic systems are extractive, and the focus on profit can stifle purpose. To enact systems change we need to imagine the “unthinkable” and embrace new, purpose-driven models that generate shared value for the benefit of all.
We spoke with Eric Ezechieli, Co-Founder of NATIVA, about how this company is connecting legacy leaders and accelerating the transition to a regenerative paradigm in Italy and globally.
What inspired you to start advocating for the Wellbeing Economy?
I grew up in the middle of the Italian Alps, and this has allowed me to live immersed in nature, experiencing the Oneness that connects humans and natural systems. When I was about 15, I felt that something did not work in our way of living, but I could not focus on what that was until I read The Limits to Growth, commissioned by the Club of Rome and published by MIT in 1972. Those pages, authored by Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jørgen Randers, William W. Behrens III, and a team of researchers, made me realize that the human species and an economic system of pursuing unlimited growth could not have a future on a finite planet.
Later, during my university studies in business and economics, I realized that, according to the dominant economic model, the purpose of a business is to create value for the shareholders, without proper consideration for other stakeholders, such as employees, the community in which the company operates, and nature. As a consequence, the unsustainability crisis can only get worse and worse: a systematic and exponentially accelerating decline in biocapacity and trust between people.
In 2010, Paolo Di Cesare and I merged our competencies and our strong desire to make change happen, leading to the creation of NATIVA in 2012.
Our company exists to accelerate the transition from an extractive economic paradigm to a regenerative one, wherein businesses are capable of generating greater economic, social, and environmental value than what they take to operate and make a profit. This vision closely aligns with that of the Wellbeing Economy.
Today, we are a team of 70 individuals, and we take pride in supporting some of the most significant Italian and international companies in radically evolving their models.
The NATIVA team in 2022.
What do you consider to be your biggest success as an advocate and professional in this space? Can you share any stories of the impact your work has had that have surprised you?
When Paolo and I founded NATIVA, it seemed obvious to us to write within our Articles of Association that the purpose of our company was to generate a positive impact on society and on people, as well as the creation of profit. This ambition turned into a surprising discovery: our intention was not acceptable within the Italian legal system, since it did encompass a purpose other than the generation of profit. After being rejected four times, NATIVA’s bylaws were finally accepted by the Italian Business Register, with its original corporate purpose. This experience triggered our resolve to change the law.
The Articles of Association of NATIVA were actually an adaptation of the Model Benefit Corporation Legislation (MBCL), which, at the time, existed only in six US states. A Benefit Corporation considers the creation of value for stakeholders in its bylaws. This governance structure requires managers to balance the interests of shareholders with the interests of society and the environment. This shift lays solid foundations for embarking on the journey toward sustainability because shareholders assign a broader mandate to the management.
Through our efforts and the collaboration with a team led by the Italian senator Mauro Del Barba, since 2016, the legislation recognizing Benefit Corporations (known as Società Benefit) has been introduced in Italy, which became the first sovereign state to recognize this legal status.
It’s fantastic to see that globally there are over 20,000 Benefit Corporations, 3,200 of which are in Italy. If “Società Benefit” were a single company, it would be the largest in the country, counting almost 200,000 employees. Benefit Corporations are distributed across 38 states in the United States and various countries including Italy, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Canada, Ecuador, Peru, Rwanda, Spain, and Panama, and some of the most well-known B Corps include Patagonia, Ben & Jerry’s, Kickstarter, Ferrarelle, illycaffè, and Nespresso Italy.
How do you feel that shifting to a Wellbeing Economy will help make the world better?
Wellbeing and regeneration should be the only purpose of most human activities. The contrary sounds suspicious; how could anyone make a profit at the cost of social and natural systems? We will eventually evolve toward an “Economy of Care” in which people and businesses are rewarded the most when they take care of people and nature. Imagine a future when business, one of the most powerful forces on Earth — capable of changing landscapes, influencing the lives of millions, and altering the climate — starts using all its power to generate shared value for the benefit of all: communities, workers, the planet, and shareholders. This will change the course of capitalism and history.
What are some of the challenges you typically face in advocating for the Wellbeing Economy?
To shift to a Wellbeing Economy we need to create a new “mythology” to replace the prevailing old one, which eventually creates death instead of life and therefore could be labelled as “extinctionist.” There are now millions of individuals and business leaders worldwide who sense the urgency to take action. For us, these people have a name: legacy leaders. They have decided to embrace an extreme, new way of doing business, inspired by the awareness and a clear understanding of the role they want to play in creating the future.
Another exciting challenge for us is to find them, empower them to unleash the full potential of their businesses, and connect them with each other through activities and initiatives that can multiply positive impact.
Are there any upcoming initiatives or projects related to your work/the Wellbeing Economy you’d like to share?
In Italy in June 2022, we launched CO2alition, an initiative involving a group of companies committed to climate neutrality. Today, it involves 89 Italian companies with a total turnover exceeding €30 billion and more than 40,000 employees. Its aim is to push beyond a pledge of climate neutrality and generate a “system action” using the tools of stakeholder governance. The companies that are part of CO2alition include climate neutrality in their Articles of Association. As such, they will have to publicly report year on year the progress they make in the implementation of such contributions. In this decisive moment of history, we firmly believe that this will create a framework to collectively achieve a single objective. Therefore, today we are seeking partners who are willing to promote this initiative beyond Italy, within their respective nations. Many discussions are underway.
The launch of CO2alition.
What can people do to help spread the word about or take action toward transitioning to the Wellbeing Economy? How can they support your mission?
A change of mindset is the main prerequisite for system change. In order to accelerate in this direction, we must guarantee every human being the freedom and the cultural tools to imagine what today is regarded as “unthinkable” — unthinkable due to the sole fact that no one has imagined it before. When we reflect on a new model, a new project, a new product, or when we make a choice, in business or our private lives, it will be essential to combine freedom with awareness and learn to exceed the limits, including the cultural ones, that we have decided to impose upon ourselves, freeing us from the myths that could compromise our future and that of coming generations. This is the way. As NATIVA’s saying goes, “Embrace Radicality and Evolution Will Flow.”
If we want to make the world better and ensure long-term wellbeing for all, everyone needs access to a high quality of life that inspires them to live with purpose while protecting the planet. Retirement communities are often seen as antithetical to these goals and aging is widely misunderstood. Thankfully, there are purpose-driven retirement villages that provide this demographic with everything they need to enjoy the later phase of life.
We spoke with Jamie Bunce, CEO of Inspired Villages, a retirement village brand operating in the United Kingdom, about how this company is creating sustainable retirement communities that empower residents to live their purpose.
Inspired resident Jan Grayson on her Balcony at Elderswell Village, Bedfordshire.
What inspired your founders to start advocating for the Wellbeing Economy?
I got into the property sector relatively early when I went to work for a small building contractor on a Youth Training Scheme (YTS) after leaving school at 15. Over time, I moved from construction to development, where I spent many years expanding my horizons and covering all manner of projects, including town regeneration. In 2008, I started a development and project management business, and it was during this time that my first living business was created with a focus on retirement communities. This sparked a passion that drives my career to this day.
Inspired Villages was born in 2017 when my fellow founders and I secured funding through a joint venture with Legal & General and NatWest Group Pension Fund to develop and operate a growing portfolio of communities. I took the role of CEO and have overseen the rapid growth of the business from 25 to 350 colleagues today, supporting over 1,200 residents with a secured pipeline of 2,800 later-living properties across the UK.
Purpose is a core part of life, and my key career decisions have been driven by purpose. I like to see a direct physical result from what I do, and at Inspired Villages we make a tangible, positive impact on people’s lives and wider communities. Running this business allows me to match my purpose with the business outcome.
What do you consider to be your biggest success as an advocate and professional in this space? Can you share any stories of the impact your work has had that have surprised you?
I’m not always surprised but I am inspired on a daily basis. On average, our gym-going residents see a nearly nine-year reduction in their biological age. One particular resident has actually improved hers by almost 20 years, which I was not just surprised but amazed by!
Another resident had a tour of our village in a mobility scooter and within three months of moving in started a walking club thanks to her improved mobility. A gentleman who moved into a village to be closer to his family following a life-changing accident now visits the gym three times a week.
We also just opened the UK’s first net-zero (regulated energy) retirement community with our Millfield Green village, which is a hugely proud moment for Inspired as an organization and me personally as CEO. It will become the blueprint for all our future communities as we explore better ways to reduce our environmental impact as well as drive and promote positive benefits to the residents and wider communities from a wellbeing point of view.
How do you feel that shifting to a Wellbeing Economy will help make the world better?
I recently attended the fantastic event, Anthropy23. The objective is for business leaders to come together and consider how their purpose can drive positive change for the sake of people, planet, and places. Nowhere is this shift more present than at Anthropy, and I was delighted to represent Inspired Villages and the integrated retirement communities (IRC) sector there. The talks and panels focused on things we have to be optimistic about and how impactful change we make now can be integral to making the world a better place.
I joined a panel on how we change the narrative on aging as we phase into a 100-year life span, and there was so much enthusiasm for the work Inspired and many others on the panel do to help improve the narrative on aging as well support the wellbeing of our aging population. At its core, this demographic has so much to offer society: they are experienced, proud, passionate, and curious about trying new things. When we recognize that and empower them to remain active, connected corporate citizens long past retirement, the world will certainly be a better place to be and, integral to our purpose at Inspired, a better place to grow old.
Jamie Bunce
What are some of the challenges you typically face in advocating for the Wellbeing Economy?
There’s a huge misconception around retirement communities. We create vibrant, connected places that can have a hugely positive impact on the lives of residents while also benefitting the wider community. It’s proven that residents visit the GP less and stay active for longer.
We create intergenerational spaces with cafés that are open for lunch and dinner to nearby families, alongside gyms where locals can keep fit. Our villages can bring so much life and activity to wider communities, so shifting perception of what living in a village is like and that it isn’t an old people’s home or care facility is a key challenge.
Are there any upcoming initiatives or projects related to your work/the Wellbeing Economy you’d like to share?
We have just opened our ninth village, Millfield Green, and we are already looking ahead to our next openings in 2024 for our Ampfield Meadows and Blendworth Hills villages. Although we’ve achieved the first net-zero village for regulated energy, we’re not stopping there and are always looking at ways we can further reduce our impact on the planet. There’s lots of work being done on how we can fulfill our climate-positive and nature-positive business commitments.
Guided by our purpose, we are creating communities rather than building homes, going far beyond bricks and mortar. We have something very exciting that we’ve been working with residents on over the last few months. We recognize that less than 5% of the UK will end up living in an Integrated Retirement Community like an Inspired Village. But we know the positive impact this can have on their life, so we are working on how we can use technology to extend the reach of this benefit to those in society who need it the most. Watch this space.
What can people do to help spread the word about or take action toward transitioning to the Wellbeing Economy? How can they support your mission?
Our purpose is to create communities where people can live the best years of their life. To do this, we need to change the narrative on aging, and I would encourage everyone to really throw away the stereotype of what later life is like. It’s a time to learn new things, visit new places, and expand your horizons, so you too can live your life with purpose, whatever your age.
Amid the complex and pressing crises facing our world, an inescapable truth has become clear: business as usual will not solve today’s biggest challenges. To overcome our collective crises and contribute to the wellbeing of people and planet, we need to reorient our business models around purpose.
We spoke with Andy Brown, Group Chief Sustainability Officer of Anglian Water, a water company that operates in the East of England, about how this company changed its model to set purpose at the heart of its constitution and is demonstrating that it works.
Andy Brown talking with an attendee at the Sustainable Schools Conference in May 2023.
What inspired your founders to start advocating for the Wellbeing Economy?
Anglian Water has always believed that we should be a purpose-led business contributing to a Wellbeing Economy. But it was the realization of the impacts of the changing climate and the growing population that crystalized the fact that we could not continue with business as usual.
The year 2010 saw us start to make real changes, as we brought our sustainability strategy and our business plan together to create a single sustainable business plan based around 10 environmental and social outcomes that we had co-created with our customers.
The next step came in 2019 when we created our purpose: “to bring environmental and social prosperity to the region we serve.” This was not a statement to put up behind reception in our head office; this was built into our constitution as we amended our Articles of Association.
What do you consider to be your biggest success as an advocate and professional in this space? Can you share any stories of the impact your work has had that have surprised you?
When we changed our Articles of Association to embed our purpose, our board also stated that they wanted to be held accountable to a set of responsible business principles. I was tasked with reviewing and recommending these, but nothing seemed to really get to the heart of what it meant to be a purpose-driven organization and deliver against the Wellbeing Economy. So, we approached the British Standards Institution about creating something new. What followed was the development of a partnership and the creation of a new Publicly Available Specification, PAS 808:2022Purpose-driven organizations. Worldviews, principles and behaviours for delivering sustainability.
After two years of development, input from a brilliant cross-sector steering group, comments from a public consultation, and great guidance from our Technical Author, Dr. Victoria Hurth, it was launched in 2022.
Since that time, I have been involved in promoting it throughout the UK and have established a community of practice that includes more than 100 individuals from organizations large and small. I have been asked to speak about it to sustainability consultants who want to use it to support their clients, to banks who are considering how it can improve their approach, food producers who think it can demonstrate their sustainability credentials, and by a university that is using it as the framework for their new social purpose. What surprised me was, despite the complexity of the subject, the immediate and widespread interest in the framework.
How do you feel that shifting to a Wellbeing Economy will help make the world better?
The challenges that we face from a changing climate, a biodiversity crisis, and population growth are too great for us to meet by maintaining the status quo. So, we have to reposition ourselves and our organizations to understand that to survive and thrive we have to maintain and enhance the wellbeing of the environment and the communities that rely on it. Making a fair return for our activities should not be incompatible with that, but our meta-purpose must be to make a positive difference in the world in which we live.
But for this meta-purpose to be achieved, all organizations need to get to this point of realization. I guess I see this shift in business model and a move to a Wellbeing Economy as fundamental in addressing and reversing the challenges that the planet and all of us who live on it face today.
What are some of the challenges you typically face in advocating for the Wellbeing Economy?
We are trying to change a well-established norm and that is always a challenge, but the evidence to drive change simply gets clearer year over year. As a business that plans for the longer term, with a Strategic Direction Statement and a Long-Term Delivery Strategy that both look 25 years into the future, it is perhaps easier for us to understand the risks that we face and the inescapable truth that our business model needed to change. For others that are focused purely on the short term, this can often be much harder to grasp.
The decision to focus on purpose and the delivery of a Wellbeing Economy has to be made in the boardroom, and so the role of peer advocacy is critical; CEOs, CFOs, and CSOs in organizations that have made the change must stand up and be counted. But increasing focus from the investment community and frameworks such as the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures, the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures, and the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation are also raising the profile of these issues at the board.
Are there any upcoming initiatives or projects related to your work/the Wellbeing Economy you’d like to share?
As an industry, there are many exciting technical developments, including the movement from traditionally-built treatment solutions to nature-based solutions and the rapid scaling up, the creation of digital twins in ecological catchments to help us make better decisions, great strides in the development of real-time monitoring and sharing of data, the creation of water smart communities, and even the role of sewage in creating sustainable aviation fuel. For me, though, it still comes back to the basics of changing the business model and demonstrating that it works.
We have been reviewing ourselves against PAS 808 and this has just been independently assessed by BSI, and we will share this assessment in 2024. Even though we had changed our Articles of Association, built our culture and values on this purpose, developed a six capitals approach to our investment decision-making, and changed our reward policies to support our purpose, we still found further areas for improvement. We want to share this so that other organizations can see how this can lead to developments and improvements in how you operate.
What can people do to help spread the word about or take action toward transitioning to the Wellbeing Economy? How can they support your mission?
Although PAS 808 was produced in the UK, it’s applicable to any organization anywhere in the world. So, I would say start with downloading and reading that; it was such an important subject that we agreed with BSI that it should be free to access. It doesn’t matter where you and your organization are on this journey, it can be used as a framework to establish your purpose, challenge and evolve your current purpose, or evaluate the success of your purpose and assess how you are displaying the behaviours of a purpose-driven organization and if that is supporting the meta-purpose of the Wellbeing Economy.
Then I would say join the “PAS 808: purpose-driven organisations” community of practice on LinkedIn, where you can share your thoughts and hear the experiences of others who are trying to embed purpose and work toward a Wellbeing Economy.
And of course, we can all use a bit of moral support, and this group can give that too.
Wellbeing Economy, Purpose-Driven Organizations, and Meaningful Work: Making Sustainability Real
By: Dr. Victoria Hurth and Professor Lorenzo Fioramonti
There is increasing fear about the economic, social, environmental, and institutional crises the world faces (also known as the polycrisis), and answers seem to be getting more plentiful, technical, and confusing. So much time is spent debating different strategies (e.g. technologies and policies) to move away from this chaos and achieve sustainability, but we almost always forget to debate and pin down the actual shared goal of sustainability, that is, our ultimate objective. We also overlook the importance of identifying the parameters we want to stick within while achieving this objective. This renders our strategy — hydrogen or electric cars, tax cuts or tax rises — along with the incentives and policies to enact them potentially useless, or worse, counter-productive because it is these two aspects — the objective and parameters — that should set the basis of strategy. If these two core aspects of direction are not clear and not shared, then we may seem to fundamentally disagree when we actually do not. We may just have different ideas about the best way to respond to the challenge (the strategy), while agreeing that the objective and the direction of travel is right. The lack of clear, shared direction also means there is no way to be accountable for success or failure — success can only be judged in relation to achievement of the objective within the parameters.
In other words, without this clarity it just isn’t possible to innovate as a collective, agree on how to judge relative strategic options, and ensure they are carried out. In turn, it isn’t possible to govern. The key functions of governance (ISO 37000) are 1) direction: setting objectives and parameters; 2) oversight: checking if we have achieved the objectives within the parameters; and 3) accountability: are we accountable to significant others for whether we have achieved the objectives within the parameters and what corrective actions will be taken. This is true if you are governing the world, a nation, a company, or even your own life. So, without the direction, the rest is irrelevant: we literally can’t govern well without it.
What is most frustrating is that the world has been silently singing in chorus that wellbeing (the good life/flourishing) is the ultimate outcome we are all after and that the health of the social and environmental systems that we rely on to achieve this objective are the minimum parameters we need to stick to.
Apart from wellbeing for society as a whole being the underlying point of an economy (see the first chapter in almost any economic textbook), this was also the global shared objective brought to us by international leaders with the 1987 Brundtland Report (also known as “Our Common Future”). It summarized an urgent warning about the unsustainable world we were creating and how sustainable development was about ensuring the needs of the current generation were met without jeopardizing the needs of future generations. As satisfying universal human needs underpins wellbeing, what the report set out was that the goal of sustainability was about achieving wellbeing over the long-term and for everyone and not just a few, i.e., long-term wellbeing for all. The report also made clear that our collective long-term wellbeing requires healthy social and environmental systems and that these were being destroyed in the process of what we were calling “development” or “progress.”
Humanity’s planetary-wide crises have only deepened since then. Instead of reminding us that we need to govern very deliberately for sustainability (long-term wellbeing for all within healthy social and environmental systems), we focused instead on the strategy, breaking this into three pillars, or 17 SDGs, and picking off those we could make work within our current economic assumptions. These strategies were never going to work without reminding ourselves and governing specifically at all levels against the objective (long-term wellbeing for all) within the parameters of healthy social and environmental systems.
We are reaching the end game. People are starting to realize that we are at risk of losing what is most precious before we have really clarified what it is.
We believe these crises will continue to deepen unless we can acknowledge en masse that:
1) It is a defunct basis for governing the market economy that is causing unsustainability and that a new market economy needs to be urgently born (or else lose the market economy and end up in a command-and-control reality);
2) We need to govern this new market economy by objectives and parameters that are very specifically aligned with a sustainable future, locking in success; and
3) We know how to bring about and govern this new economy — but we need to come together with far more clarity and unity of voice to make it happen.
The Economy: Humanity’s Operating System
Let’s start from the most basic (and important) question: What is an economy? If you think about it, an economy can be considered an operating system for society. It is the key system we need to govern if we want to take our shared resources and turn them into something useful for society. In particular, the economy is a collective system of role allocation, which sets rules through which certain actors are allowed to access, allocate, and transform common resources. Similar to software or a board game, an economy embeds the objective to be achieved, the parameters for achieving it by defining the roles we play, how to measure the value that is generated, and how to reward participants according to their contributions to “winning.”
However, for some time, and supercharged in the last 50 years, we have the wrong objective and wrong parameters and therefore the wrong strategy. We have assumed that financial income is the core goal — the thing we need to grow, at a household, company, country, and international level — and we have assumed that stocks and flows of financial capital are the most important parameter. Why? Because we assume money is a valid proxy for wellbeing outcomes. We therefore tend to view gross domestic product (GDP), financial profit, and household income as our tickets to a good life, and we have assumed that social and environmental systems, stakeholders, and non-financial forms of capital are limitless and immune to harm.
If we grow financial income, for example by liquidating our planetary and social assets, then we have more “tokens” to purchase our wellbeing via consumer goods and services in the market. The assumption is that more of these goods and services are the best way we can increase our wellbeing and that those companies who are increasing their financial income capture from the market must therefore be doing a good job. Why would we buy their offerings otherwise? These companies also provide jobs, which give us more financial income to purchase that wellbeing. At a national level, we judge governments on how many tokens we have and how much our tokens can buy, which means that governments need to be playing this game better than other countries, and GDP and “economic growth” become the anchor that political success is tethered to. Worse, governments are complicit in leading society into this false belief that financial income and wellbeing are good proxies, hence when it comes to who to vote for we are already primed to favour governments that measure up to this view.
In this comfortable abstraction from reality, we have forgotten to check if financial income really is a good proxy for our collective long-term wellbeing and whether or not we were regenerating or depleting the health of the systems we rely on for it. Of course, we are now starting to be force-fed the answer through daily reports of existential threats to humanity’s ability to thrive, or even survive on planet Earth.
So, from a macro perspective, what is needed is a shift from the current national and global operating systems — that dictate that financial income is the most valuable outcome which automatically results in long-term wellbeing for all and where the resources we rely on for this are unaccounted for — to a new operating system. A new market economy. A Wellbeing Economy. This economy has high-quality governance at its heart. Stakeholders within it clearly and accountably optimize long-term collective wellbeing (sustainability) and do this while ensuring the health of collective social and environmental assets, stakeholders, and non-financial capital that result from them. Why should actors be given the right to take up precious resources on behalf of the collective if they can’t prove they are innovating for something valuable and that they aren’t asset-stripping these resources in the process?
While setting out the macro level governance of the economy is core, it remains a set of well-thought-out policy intentions unless these intentions are made real with governance within organizations — and that includes all types of organizations: charities, companies, community groups, and government as an organization. This organizational governance mirrors the macro level by being directed toward long-term wellbeing for all (sustainability) as the goal and setting organizational-level parameters that ensure the organization operates within the thresholds of healthy systems, stakeholders, and capital.
Through this system of macro and meso governance, we can also actively address the other big mistake we have made: assuming that, at a micro level, humans are primarily financially-oriented. This fits the existing operating system but represses the fact that we are purposeful creatures seeking meaningful lives and that we know this meaning is primarily derived from feeling like we have made other’s lives better, like picking up a pencil or opening a door for someone and feeling that “warm glow.” So, as Daniel Pink and others set out, while money — always a means to tangible ends — is a known motivator, purpose is a far more powerful one. It is this powerful and relatively untapped energy source that purpose-driven organizations unlock while operationalizing the Wellbeing Economy. Therefore at the micro-level, in the Wellbeing Economy, and made real by purpose-driven organizations, we find fully empowered human beings who perform a wide variety of roles in society. In this vein, and as many have argued over the years, the very concept of work needs a new definition to embrace all forms of value-generating activities, including volunteering, caring, community participation, ecosystem preservation, etc., which have wrongly been relegated to the uneconomic realm by previous approaches.
Sustainability Unleashed and Unsustainability Stopped
In the new market-based operating system, value that contributes to this objective within the parameters is deliberately generated through pursuits at different levels and through multiple pathways. All optimal strategic routes to long-term wellbeing are debated and pursued, like the regenerative approaches to sequestering carbon dioxide through well-considered habitat restoration, or moving to open data practices to restore trust, or raising the minimum wage. These may, or may not, require intermediary financial transactions and the need to create stocks of financial capital and growth in material throughout or at the level of financial transactions. While it is fairly certain that healthy stocks and flows of financial capital will always have a central role to play in investing in long-term wellbeing for all, meeting the expectations of stakeholders, and paying the bills, what exact role needs to be fully questioned.
In this new economy, growth of financial activity as a marker of success is no longer measured in terms of stuff we produce and consume regardless of the wellbeing impact. Instead, we measure and drive growth in terms of wellbeing for all and achieving and maintaining the health of the systems, stakeholders, and multi-capital that underpin it for future generations. This means the idea of “value” and “value creation” can have real substance, anchored to what we really care about. With a new definition of value, anchored to long-term wellbeing for all, (sustainability), the idea of “profit” in a Wellbeing Economy would be completely reimagined. No longer limited to financial outputs, profit must equate value-generation at multiple levels and in a multiplicity of forms socially, environmentally, institutionally, and in relation to the ends and resources that really matter.
The nested governance model that we propose can be summarized in the two illustrations below — a clear and sharable (please share freely!) expression of the task we need to undertake if we have a chance of achieving a “sustainable” market economy. And we say “market” economy deliberately. We are pretty sure we need the efficiency, freedom, and democratizing effects of a functioning market economy to address the urgent issues we face and to optimize wellbeing going forward.
The first diagram summarizes the necessary transition between the current financial growth economy, in other words, the unsustainable business-as-usual (BAU) market economy, and a Wellbeing Economy, in other words, the sustainability-centred market economy. We believe that, unless we are successful at building this new market economy, held in place through a new governance model then, as the unsustainability crises compounds, we may very quickly see the collapse of markets and some form of command-and-control operating system, which has proven so many times to be ineffective. Just think how easy it was for us to be persuaded to give up market freedoms when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
Unpicking the Meso Level
This second diagram is an adapted Daly Triangle and bridges the Wellbeing Economy (the whole triangle) to the practical detail of the three major worldviews/organizational “logics” that structure governance and therefore decision-making in organizations in real-time. These logics therefore frame the outcomes and impact that can be achieved by an organization. This is an adaptation of the great work of Herman Daly and subsequently of Donnella Meadows. In emails with Herman Daly the week before he sadly passed, he was very supportive of the work and the bridging of the macro (that he and Donella Meadows focus on with the triangle) with the meso-level of purpose-driven organizations.
LOGIC 1
In the middle of the triangle is the current BAU financial income-focused economy and associated organizational governance. Here the objective of the economy, and organizations, is financial capital accumulation, and what we ask them to spend most time protecting as a means to this end is stocks and flows of financial capital. We have constrained the basis of governance direction to intermediary ends and means. This means strategy is constrained within this, as are the core governance functions of oversight and accountability. This puts the proper innovative goal of long-term wellbeing for all out of sight, and, in fact, off limits because the BAU market economy puts the health of the values shared resources “off balance sheet.”
If you keep expanding such a global system — one that is governed to innovate for self-interested financial value capture fuelled by the wanton liquidations of shared assets, then it is easy to see why we have ended up with an existential threat to long-term wellbeing for all (unsustainability). What is most toxic is that if you are trapped in this way of viewing the world it isn’t easy to change the “investment case” and find a different reason to innovate for a sustainable future. The only arguments that “cut it” are those you can prove are alleviating a threat to short-term financial interest.
LOGIC 2
Given how hard and fast the unfolding social and ecological instability is revealing itself, some governments and organizations are moving to a state of long-term enlightened self-value (ESV). While financial self-interest remains the overarching objective, the governance parameters for decision-making are, in effect, broadened to encompass the health of social and environmental systems, stakeholders, and the health of stocks and flows of non-financial capital.
This longer-term self-interest allows for a change in the investment case to divert funds that would otherwise be extracted or reinvested for more financial extraction to instead be used to bolster the health of stakeholders, employees, or ecosystem regeneration, for example. This is essentially a “do no harm” approach to a sustainable future. Making a case to invest because the long-term financial interest of the company is ensured because harm to the underlying assets is reduced is one thing, but innovation that actively solves unsustainability? There is no real basis for this. These organizations are therefore partially aligned to a sustainable future. Given how far degraded a whole range of social and environmental systems are, moving business models into a place where they really can claim to “do no harm” is far, far harder than most organizations realize and requires a level of innovation and energy far beyond where we are now.
While the move to ESV has been the major thrust of late (think ESG), we believe we need to be much bolder if we are going to avert the threats we face — and optimize the benefit possible. This is because these ESV organizations still filter their decisions against the goal of financial self-interest. This constrains the ability to innovate, collaborate, and harness the deep motivations of human stakeholders. They may be moving toward doing no harm, but will they get there and what opportunities to solve the desperate threats to long-term wellbeing for all will be forfeited in the process?
LOGIC 3
This is where the logic of purpose-driven organizations comes in — as the aligned vehicle for achieving the Wellbeing Economy. By focusing governance directly on the end goal of the economy — long-term wellbeing for all, purpose-driven organizations, and the Wellbeing Economy they service, in effect, reject the specific assumptions of the BAU market economy. Rather than relying on a BAU economy to auto-produce collective long-term wellbeing — there is active governance of this and the health of the parameters to achieve it. This means that innovation is untethered from static assumptions like the role of organizations in society, who constitutes reasonable partners to collaborate with and what counts as success. Core concepts of the economy like competition law and fiduciary duty can be actively and wisely rewritten to be “fit for purpose.” GDP and financial profits become one partial means to that end and other forms of value-creation become equally or more important. Certainly, helping liquidate one form of value (like an ecosystem) and turning it into financial capital could not be counted as organizational success.
In summary, we know where we have gone wrong, and we know how to fix it. The answer lies in good governance: setting objectives and parameters that are aligned to a sustainable future and adjusting all the “rules of the game” so that we achieve this. This will also enable us to ensure we can collectively judge the most effective strategies of economic and social development, allowing all different players (governments, businesses, and citizens) to collaborate for shared outcomes within shared clear parameters that protect our most precious resources.
The core issue is that we just haven’t been able to say this loudly and clearly. BAU is so powerful and embedded in our cultural subconscious that it is easy to doubt that a new way is possible. What would change this? Co-creating multi-stakeholder clear standards that put the collective view of the new governance needed onto paper, allowing for clarity of direction and the ability to oversee and hold ourselves accountable for these new practices. In this respect, the world now has a catalyst moment to co-create the governance frame to align action and drive accountability for the Wellbeing Economy. The first national standard in purpose-driven organizations, “PAS 808:2022 Purpose-driven organizations. Worldviews, principles and behaviours for delivering sustainability” is very likely to be put forward to be developed as an international standard (ISO), the world’s most highly developed multi-stakeholder consensus-building process. This a chance to unite the field via the 170 national member bodies that make up ISO, and hence their engaged citizens who can feed into and co-own the outcome. Through the ISO process, we move from talking (often obscurely) to engaging and testing views in a fair and action-oriented way.
If you agree with the problem and the solution we set out and want to make it reality, then please freely share the material we have laid out and speak to your national standardization body to find out how to get involved!
Dr. Victoria Hurth is a global expert; thought leader in sustainability, ESG, and purpose governance; and Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership Fellow.
Professor Lorenzo Fioramonti is the Founding Director of the Institute for Sustainability at the University of Surrey (UK), a member of the Club of Rome, and a former member of Parliament and Minister of Education, University, and Research in Italy.
Crises surrounding collective wellbeing are sharply felt in urban contexts, where loneliness, isolation, and anxiety are commonly reported. Efforts need to be made to reorient businesses and our economy around positive impact so those living in cities can feel healthy, safe, and secure, all while protecting the environment for generations to come.
We spoke with Duncan Newbury, VP of Brand and Global Marketing Director at Therme Group, about how this global wellbeing pioneer is creating wellbeing experiences that foster health, connection, and community.
What inspired your founders to start advocating for the Wellbeing Economy?
At Therme, we are passionate about inclusive and accessible wellbeing. We believe everyone should have access to the highest quality wellbeing experiences regardless of their background or abilities.
The modern Therme concept began in Germany as a technology-driven, person-centric approach to wellness. It has since been successfully introduced in Romania, with Therme Bucharest. We are now working toward delivering the concept in cities across the world to create a positive wellbeing impact for people and planet.
Globally, we are seeing a crisis of wellbeing and nowhere is this more obvious than in our cities. Research has shown that people living in cities disproportionately suffer from mood disorders and anxiety, and that prolonged loneliness (a common affliction in modern cities) can have the same impact on mortality as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day. We want to help create a future where humans can thrive in urban contexts. That means creating businesses and a wider economy that positively impact not only individual wellbeing but also communities and nature.
What do you consider to be your biggest success as an advocate and professional in this space? Can you share any stories of the impact your work has had that have surprised you?
Together with our strategic partner, Thermengruppe Josef Wund, we welcome millions of guests each year to our wellbeing resorts. Building a community around these locations of people who are committed to wellbeing has been a hugely satisfying part of our work. We are now working closely with stakeholders across the globe to deliver new Therme locations.
One of the biggest successes of delivering the Therme concept has been how communities have reacted to it and integrated wellbeing into their daily lives. Though our concept is new to many people, we have seen an openness toward and acceptance of the experiences we offer. For example, in Therme Bucharest, our aqua fit classes and Aufguss sauna rituals have been hugely popular activities. There is an appetite for new experiences, but ones which are based on the fundamental human need for connection to water, nature, and each other.
The Herbarium Festival, a new flagship event dedicated to sauna and herbalism in Therme Bucharest, drew together thousands of visitors united in the ritual of the sauna and joy of wellbeing and nature.
How do you feel that shifting to a Wellbeing Economy will help make the world better?
The Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WEAll) describes the Wellbeing Economy as: “designed to serve people and planet, not the other way around.” Looking beyond GDP to delivering wellbeing represents a fundamental shift in how we frame success.
In shifting to a Wellbeing Economy, we can bring the focus of success toward connection, community, and the enhancement of physical and mental wellbeing. By centring these elements and placing them within the context of supporting the natural world, we can create a future where we can all thrive.
The path we’re currently on as a global community is not sustainable. By putting wellbeing at the foundation of successful communities, we can drive sustainable economic growth. This means we need to reframe how we see success away from historical ideas of GDP and growth and toward more human and planetary values. For example, if we shift criteria to an emphasis on factors such as health, life satisfaction, social cohesion, cultural diversity, and environmental impact, we create cities that people want to live in, places where they feel healthy, happy, and secure. If we do this, communities — and by extension, economies — will thrive.
What are some of the challenges you typically face in advocating for the Wellbeing Economy?
Our facilities include multiple saunas, adult-only and family areas, indoor and outdoor thermal and mineral pools, evidence-based nutrition, aqua fit classes, waterslides and wave pools, spa treatments, sports events, and art and cultural programming. All these elements are set amongst thousands of biodiverse plants and managed by seamlessly integrated state-of-the-art technology.
Herein lies a challenge: as a multi-sensory experience, you can only fully understand it by going and experiencing a Therme. It isn’t easy for us to explain the wealth of what Therme has to offer to those who aren’t familiar with it without bringing people to one of our facilities.
On the flip side of this, we have found that once people come and experience Therme, they are incredibly positive and want to return, alongside wanting to bring a Therme to their own city. After visiting, they can see that by combining scale and sustainable technology, we can deliver exceptional quality at an affordable price point.
The Herbarium Festival in 2023 was created as a celebration of the active sauna community at Therme Bucharest.
Are there any upcoming initiatives or projects related to your work/the Wellbeing Economy you’d like to share?
We are moving into a very exciting new phase for our company. As well as continuing to innovate at our existing locations in Germany and Romania, we are developing the Therme concept in cities across the globe. In the UK, planning permission for the updated design of our new facility in Manchester has been approved, and we are working closely with our strategic partner Thermengruppe Josef Wund to deliver a new location in Bad Vilbel close to Frankfurt, Germany.
We will be delivering our first North American location at Ontario Place in Toronto, Canada, and we are working closely with the local government in Washington, DC, to explore site options for a project in the city. We also have a project in development in Incheon, South Korea, and are exploring options for further locations in Asia Pacific and the US.
Additionally, we have partnered with a number of thought leaders and academic institutions. Most recently, we partnered with the University of Surrey, one of the world’s leading universities for tourism studies and research, on a project that seeks to transform the tourism industry’s emissions measurement and carbon trading with crypto-based systems. With the aim of forming a more sustainable future, the initiative will produce new digital platforms that significantly increase the tourism industry’s ability to measure and reduce its carbon footprint.
The partnership represents Therme’s goal of contributing toward the green economy of the future. A significant proportion of our carbon footprint is generated by guest travel. Therefore, gaining an understanding of our footprint and how to reduce it is crucial. By investing in research, we can also make the findings available to the wider industry so that, collectively, we can make steps toward a more sustainable and healthier future.
What can people do to help spread the word about or take action toward transitioning to the Wellbeing Economy? How can they support your mission?
At Therme, we function a little differently. We are a connected, interdisciplinary ecosystem of companies, ventures, and partnerships. This approach allows us to challenge accepted norms, be more fluid in our actions, and work together to deliver our vision. Developing partnerships with like-minded individuals and companies that are committed to advancing wellbeing at an urban level and throughout the world is something we actively seek.
We’re eager to hear from everybody and create forums of discussion that are not only about us but that explore our industry as a whole. We encourage anyone curious about new wellbeing environments to come and visit one of our destinations. Therme is really something that has to be experienced to be truly understood, and we’d love to welcome you!
