Post-growth business: Exploring the role of business in a post-growth economy

Jennifer Hinton on changing the game

In a recent talk, ecological economist Jennifer Hinton presented key ideas from her forthcoming book “Game Changer: An economy beyond profit”.

Using the metaphor of a “game” she argued that the current for‑profit economy is a game with a clear objective: private financial gain. Further, this objective is supported by a powerful narrative—that humans are inherently greedy and competitive, and that profit is therefore the best incentive for investment, innovation, and efficiency.

Throughout the talk, Jennifer used causal loop diagrams (CLDs) to make visible the system dynamics of this game. She showed how common profit‑maximising strategies—such as advertising, planned obsolescence, wage suppression, and growth through mergers and consolidation—create reinforcing feedback loops. These dynamics may increase profits in the short term, but they also drive consumerism, rising inequality, environmental degradation, and growing political influence through lobbying and regulatory capture.

Jennifer contrasted this with a different possible “new game”: a not‑for‑profit market economy, operating alongside the state, civil society, and the commons. In this alternative system, businesses still sell goods and services, but they have no private owners and the purpose is not private financial gain. All surplus is reinvested to serve social and collective goals. Companies would use typical strategies already employed by existing not-for-profit businesses and social enterprises: paying a living wage, reducing the wage ratio, pricing for affordability, and focusing on goods that directly and clearly meet needs.

Using CLDs again, she illustrated how changing the goal of the system would change its behaviour—shifting from reinforcing loops that demand perpetual growth to more balancing dynamics oriented around meeting needs, maintaining ecological health, and supporting wellbeing. Jennifer proposes that the fact that the model extrapolates from strategies already used by existing companies lends an important element of validity to the dynamics that we can reasonably expect from such a system.

She emphasised that such a system would require continuous monitoring of environmental impacts, strong institutions, and deliberate governance. The make-up of society would be a mix of different spheres: a need-based market, a partner state, civil society and commons (what size and role they would play might vary).

In answering questions, Jennifer also acknowledged transition challenges, including the “first‑mover problem” in a global economy, suggesting that coordinated coalitions and alliances like the WEGo alliance could be key to initiating change.

Overall, Hinton’s message was that if we want different outcomes, we need to change the rules of the game with the rules around profit being a key lever to change.

Further reading and links where Jennifer discusses these ideas:
Jennifer Hinton’s website: https://jenniferhinton.org
Game Changer – An economy beyond profit (Youtube video):
Rethinking how profit is used (Rethink Global podcast)

13 April 2026

Jessika Luth Richter

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Postgrowth Business Models Seminar Series

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Oksana Mont awarded fellowship to research postgrowth business in Japan in Autumn 2026!

Professor Oksana Mont has been awarded a six-month fellowship from Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (RJ) to conduct research at Tokyo College, University of Tokyo. The project, titled Thriving without growth: Japanese pathways for sustainable business, examines how companies and institutions operate in a context of prolonged low or no economic growth.

Japan’s long experience of near-steady-state economic conditions offers a unique opportunity to study how businesses sustain innovation, employment, and social stability without relying on continuous economic expansion. During her stay, Professor Mont will investigate how Japanese companies adapt to steady-state conditions and what lessons these experiences hold for Europe’s transition towards post-growth futures.

Autumn colors around a pond in Hibiya Park in Tokyo, 2019 (Source: Wikipedia, CC)

The fellowship builds directly on the Wallenberg Scholar programme Post-Growth Business (2025–2030) at Lund University, which develops frameworks for how companies can operate within planetary boundaries while ensuring human well-being. In Japan, the research will combine literature review, qualitative fieldwork, and stakeholder workshops with companies, municipalities, and policy organisations. The project will also use Mobile Research Labs, an intensive, collaborative, field-based methodology developed in prior European research projects.

The stay will strengthen collaboration between Lund University and leading Japanese scholars, including colleagues at the University of Tokyo and other research institutions. It will provide comparative insights into how businesses can thrive without quantitative growth and help advance a Japan–Sweden research network on post-growth and wellbeing economies.

Following the fellowship, the findings will feed into a symposium at Lund University and the development of a Massive Open Online Course on post-growth business, aimed at a broad international audience

19 February 2026

Jessika Luth Richter

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PGB Research Team Meets: Professor Julia Steinberger

In the first year of the project, researchers in the Postgrowth Business (PGB) project are not only reviewing literature related to postgrowth and business, but also meeting with important postgrowth researchers to understand their research findings so far and insights into the principles of postgrowth and the role of business. In February, we met with Professor Julia Steinberger.

Julia is a leading researcher in ecological economics and post‑growth studies, based at the University of Lausanne. She serves as one of the three Principal Investigators of REAL – A Post‑Growth Deal, an European Research Council (ERC) Synergy Project (2023–2029) designed to advance scientific understanding of how societies can ensure human well‑being within planetary limits without relying on economic growth. Her work spans resource modelling, provisioning systems, energy use, inequality, and climate justice. At REAL, Steinberger leads the work on Post‑growth Provisioning Systems, investigating how essential needs, like housing, mobility, food, energy, can be met sustainably and fairly through democratic and non‑extractive arrangements.

However, the origins of the REAL project for Julia began much earlier. Some of the foundational work came from her earlier project at Leeds in the UK, “Living Well Within Limits”, which quantified the biophysical resource requirements for achieving human well‑being. Research in that project quantified the energy requirements for decent living standards, finding that there is available technology that can be combined with sufficiency measures to meet the needs for a decent life for a global population with far less energy than present (Millward-Hopkins et al., 2020). Another key insight from this earlier research project was that the socio-economic context, particularly the provision of public services as opposed to economic growth, is important for realising decent living standards with low energy requirements (Vogel et al., 2021).

Following up on this earlier work, the REAL research team expands to cover integrated analyses of possibilities (biophysical limits), provisioning systems, policies, politics and practices necessary for a just post-growth transition. Julia noted that the ultimate aim of a postgrowth transition is restructuring and repurposing the economy to enable well-being for all within planetary boundaries. Already one key take-away from her research with others in the project so far is that targeting human needs satisfaction directly (rather than economic growth to satisfy needs indirectly) can enable decoupling of income and wellbeing (Tamberg et al., 2025 – preprint).

As the PGB project progresses we will also be following the findings of the REAL project with interest!

Learn more about the REAL project: Post-growth – REAL – A Post-Growth Deal

6 February 2026

Jessika Luth Richter

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Rethinking innovation, control, and care in a post-growth world

Reflections from Mario’s talk by Oksana Mont

As part of the Post-Growth Business seminar series, we welcomed Mario Pansera in December 2025. Mario Pansera is currently an OPORTUNIUS Research Professor affiliated with the University of Vigo and an affiliated researcher at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. He is Principal Investigator of the ERC Starting Grant project PROSPERA and coordinator of the Horizon 2020 project JUST2CE. Mario is also a member of the Advisory Board of the Post-Growth Business (PGB) project, and we look forward to future exchanges and cross-pollination between PGB and his projects, particularly on innovation, post-growth, and socio-technical change.

During his talk, Mario challenged one of the most persistent assumptions in sustainability debates: that innovation, if only properly accelerated, will solve our ecological and social crises. Instead, Mario invited us to examine its politics, direction, and distributional consequences. He offered a critical lens on how innovation has become entangled with growth imperatives, technological determinism, and an illusion of control that ultimately undermines both ecological integrity and social justice.

Directed innovation and the politics behind it

Mario began by stressing that innovation is never simply a matter of technical progress. Instead, innovation is directed – shaped by political choices, economic interests, and institutional power. What gets funded, scaled up, or marginalised reflects deeper priorities related to growth, competitiveness, and capital accumulation. This perspective stands in contrast to mainstream narratives that call for “more innovation” as a generic solution. Mario argued that such calls obscure the question that really matters: innovation for what, for whom, and under whose control?

Creative destruction and the growth imperative

Drawing on Joseph Schumpeter’s concept of creative destruction, Mario traced how innovation came to occupy a central role in capitalist growth dynamics. Today, this logic translates into what Mario described as a form of “great destruction” – not merely of firms or sectors, but of ecosystems, livelihoods, and social stability. Productivity gains no longer translate into shared prosperity, as illustrated by the well-documented productivity–pay gap. At the same time, environmental impacts continue to rise, disproportionately driven by the wealthiest segments of society.

Technological determinism and the illusion of control

A recurring theme in the talk was the critique of technological determinism, the belief that technology evolves according to its own internal logic and will inevitably deliver progress. Closely related is what Mario described as “the illusion of control”: the assumption that complex social and ecological crises can be managed through increasingly sophisticated technological systems. This illusion becomes particularly dangerous when technologies are deployed in contexts of violence and domination. Referring to contemporary warfare, Mario highlighted how artificial intelligence is central to the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. In such contexts, digital and military technologies are not neutral tools but actively shape and intensify violence, undermining the conditions for life and stripping people of value and agency. The key point was that without social oversight and democratic governance, technological systems tend to reinforce existing power asymmetries and can become instruments of large-scale harm rather than progress.

An alternative framing: conviviality, care, and maintenance

Against this backdrop, Mario proposed an alternative way of thinking about innovation – one rooted in conviviality. Drawing on Ivan Illich and other thinkers, he argued for technologies that support autonomy, care, and collective well-being, which entails rethinking labour and hierarchical organisation of production, valuing care, repair, and maintenance as central economic activities, and questioning the assumption that radical technological breakthroughs are always necessary.

Learning from collective experiments

The latter part of the talk turned to concrete historical and contemporary examples. The Lucas Plan of 1970s Britain illustrated how workers themselves articulated alternative, socially useful production pathways in response to militarisation and job losses. More recent cases, such as worker-recuperated factories, platform cooperatives, and community-led solutions, demonstrate that hybrid value chains and non-capitalist forms of organisation already exist, often in the cracks of dominant economic systems. These examples challenge the notion that post-growth implies stagnation and highlight alternative forms of value creation that better align with social needs and ecological limits, including welfare services, collectively managed infrastructure, and socially useful work.

Rediscovering collective governance Mario closed by situating innovation within a broader political–economic context. Historically, periods of crisis have been followed by strong redistributive policies, including high taxation of wealth and capital. For Mario, the lesson is clear: meaningful innovation for a post-growth society requires rediscovering eco-social policies, collectively managed systems, and democratic control over technology and production. The talk left us with a fundamental question: should we continue to treat innovation as a miracle cure driven by markets and growth, or should we reclaim it as a political and collective endeavour, oriented towards care, sufficiency, and justice?

You can read more in Mario’s open access book: https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/post-growth-innovation

16 December 2025

Jessika Luth Richter

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Exploring strong sustainability with visiting researcher Lotte Levelt

From September to November 2025, the PGB research team had the pleasure of welcoming Lotte Levelt, a PhD candidate from Nyenrode Business University, as a visiting researcher at the IIIEE. During her stay, Lotte engaged closely with our project group, sharing insights from her research on degrowth, strong sustainability, and post‑growth organisations. Her visit contributed to stimulating discussions on alternatives to dominant growth‑oriented business models and how firms can reorient themselves toward ecological and social well‑being.

Lotte is a full-time PhD candidate at Nyenrode’s Center for Entrepreneurship, Governance and Stewardship, where she investigates what degrowth-oriented business models might look like and how we might redefine value in a post-growth society. Before beginning her PhD, Lotte studied Governance, Economics and Development at Leiden University and completed a Research MSc in International Development Studies at the University of Amsterdam. She has also worked across Dutch government ministries, international NGOs, and as a university lecturer in sustainability and social sciences.

During her time at the IIIEE, Lotte presented her recent work, including an integrative review of degrowth, sufficiency, and regeneration as approaches to strong sustainability (Levelt et al, 2025). She showed that while the three concepts share common foundations, degrowth and sufficiency clearly articulate limits and critiques of capitalism, whereas regeneration is more varied and less unified. Her analysis identified three major tensions: the use of research perspectives misaligned with strong sustainability (leading to a risk of conceptual flexibility), differing importance placed on profit and ownership, and the gap between ideal‑type concepts and real‑world strategic contexts. She concluded that although the concepts overlap, their divergent practical applications prevent full integration, and she proposed a future research agenda to address these tensions.

Throughout her visit, Lotte’s clarity, critical reflections, and willingness to open complex theoretical debates enriched our project discussions. Her work offers valuable conceptual grounding for ongoing efforts to understand what post-growth businesses might require and what organizational transformations could look like in practice.

We thank Lotte for her inspiring contributions during her stay at the IIIEE and look forward to possible future collaborations as her doctoral research evolves!

5 December 2025

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Post-Growth Business project to meet Lund’s Klimatallians on 10 December

On 10 December, the Post-Growth Business project team will present the aims and early activities of the project to Lunds Klimatallians – a regional network that brings together around 30 companies and organisations working actively with climate action and sustainable development. The network creates spaces where climate ambition meets business development, fostering knowledge exchange and collaboration across sectors in close cooperation with Lund University, the International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics (IIIEE), and the municipality.

During the meeting, we will introduce our research on how businesses can operate within a low-growing or steady-state economy. We will also invite member companies to share their views, current initiatives, and challenges in adapting their business models to sustainability without relying on continuous economic growth.

This dialogue will provide valuable feedback for our project and help us understand how post-growth thinking is perceived and practised in real business contexts. It also opens opportunities for future collaboration and co-creation of solutions grounded in both academic research and business experience.

For more information about Lunds Klimatallians, visit: www.lundsklimat.se

24 October 2025

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About the project

This project explores the role of business in a post-growth economy. It proposes a new research field on post-growth business models to advance the sustainability agenda. The project addresses the call for inter- and trans-disciplinary science at the intersection of sustainability, business and futures studies with political economy, and co-creating knowledge with societal actors.

Post-Growth Business – exploring how companies can thrive within limits

The Post-Growth Business (PGB) project explores how companies can operate successfully in economies that no longer depend on continuous growth. Economic expansion measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has long been equated with progress, yet this growth imperative has driven climate change, biodiversity loss, and social inequality. Research shows that “green growth” and technological efficiency alone cannot achieve absolute reductions in resource use. The PGB project therefore investigates what businesses can look like in a post-growth economy—one that prioritises wellbeing, equity, and ecological balance rather than profit maximisation.

Led by Professor Oksana Mont at Lund University, the project unites expertise in sustainability studies, business models, political economy, and futures research. It addresses three key questions:

Principles: How has the post-growth economy been conceptualised, and what role can businesses play in it?
Business models: How can post-growth business models (PBMs) be designed, assessed, and scaled?
Institutions: What institutional changes and policies can enable a business transformation towards post-growth?

The PGB project employs an innovative mixed-methods design, combining systematic literature reviews, expert studies using Delphi and Q-methodology, Stakeholder Thinking Labs, and Mobile Research Labs (MRLs)—short, immersive research engagements involving field visits, participatory workshops, and stakeholder dialogues. Empirical studies are conducted in Sweden, the European Union, and among Wellbeing Economy Governments (WEGo)—Wales, Finland, Scotland, New Zealand, Iceland, and Canada—countries that experiment with wellbeing-centred economic models.

Expected results include:
– A framework translating post-growth principles into business contexts
– A methodological assessment apparatus for evaluating PBMs
– The first empirically grounded catalogue of post-growth business models
– Policy and business recommendations to support transition beyond growth

Ultimately, the project aims to help societies and businesses “slow down by design, not disaster”, fostering sustainable prosperity within planetary boundaries.