I’ve got a thought experiment for you to try. 

Imagine a world in which our politicians and business leaders replaced the word “growth” with “progress”.  

Instead of repeatedly hearing phrases like “turbocharging economic growth”, “growth is the solution”, or “focus on growth so we can have thriving businesses, higher wages, more jobs, and reinvestment”, we’d start to hear the language shift to “turbocharging economic progress”, “progress is the solution”, and “focus on progress to achieve those same outcomes – but with broader benefits for people and the planet.” 

I find listening to politicians and business leaders who continue to recite the outdated rhetoric about economic growth in the year 2025 is like listening to someone trying to explain that the world is flat.  

Economies are far too complex and nuanced to simply focus on growing them. We need to be so much smarter than that. We can start by acknowledging our current, growth- obsessed economy has run its course and cannot be sustained.  

Let’s start by defining “growth”. I’m confident we can all agree that it is simply the increase in size of something.  

Therefore, I’m also confident we can all agree that economic growth is the increase in the size of an economy. But what does an increase in the size of an economy mean?  

Well, what is an economy? Despite how frequently the word is used, especially by politicians, defining it is not quite so easy. Here’s the definition provided by Investopedia.com: “An economy is a complex system of interrelated production, consumption, and exchange activities, which ultimately determine how resources are allocated among participants. The production, consumption, and distribution of goods and services combine to fulfill the needs of those living and operating within the economy. An economy can encompass a nation, a region, a single industry, or even just one family.” 

My personal, slightly simpler definition is: An economy is the sharing and exchange of resources, goods, ideas, and experiences between people and/or groups of people.  

Those exchanges or “trades” can happen at the global, national, local, or community level, or even within a household. It’s those sharings and exchanges that create goods and services, jobs and industries, and provide people with their needs and wants. Extracting resources, making things, moving things, and powering things requires energy — lots of it. Money is then what’s used facilitate the exchanges/trades and to keep track of who owes who what.    

Of course, our current dominant global economy has become significantly more complex and sophisticated with such mechanisms as interest, currency trading, and annual financial returns…! But the inconvenient truth remains, it is unsustainable. It is unsustainable because it works on the basis of continually extracting resources from our planet (natural resources) to make things (goods/products) that are sold (consumed) and then discarded back into our planet in the form of waste and pollution (externalities). And, even more inconveniently, the majority of the energy used to power the machines that do the extracting, making, and transporting of these resources and goods come from burning fossil fuels.   

Don’t get me wrong, the old economy has had its benefits, but it’s run its course — by at least a couple of decades.  

So now let’s define “progress”. I’m using it in this context as defined by Collinsdictionary.com: “To progress means to move over a period of time to a stronger, more advanced, or more desirable state.”  

Isn’t that precisely what all businesses want, and what we all want for our shared economy?    

Changing the rhetoric from economic growth to economic progress would allow us to collectively refocus on not just creating more jobs, but creating better, less stressful, and more resilient jobs. It would shift our focus from just creating more “wealth”, or a “bigger pie”, but distributing it fairly and reflecting on what is the impact of that wealth. Focussing on progressing a business, rather than simply growing it, would allow business leaders to be more prepared for the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. It would also allow them to focus the expertise and experience on profiting from solving our collective problems, not creating or sustaining them.    

Our current, globalised economy has been created through our collective and individual decisions over many decades (if not centuries); decisions based on our needs, social influences, knowledge, and desires.  

In the year 2025, — with thousands of satellites orbiting our planet, a global network of atmospheric and ocean sensors, the Large Hadron Collider, Artificial Intelligence and super computers — I think it’s fair to say our collective knowledge has increased significantly from just a few decades ago.  

I would also argue — now that we know our climate is changing and the impacts that is causing, there is plastic in human blood, the global population is circa 8 billion people, and millions of other species are on the verge of extinction — that our needs have changed significantly compared to just a few decades ago.  

Alongside the increase in our understanding of our world and the changes in our needs, we have also seen a significant change in our social influences. The decrease of religions on people’s lives is one such example, and the impacts of social media another.  

As for our desires, I’m not so sure. The modern-day desire to receive “likes” and “followers” on social media (by those who have access) suggest that it has changed, but I think this is really just a virtual manifestation of the enduring human desire for belonging, friendship, connection, and community. 

So, if we can acknowledge that these changes have occurred over the past few decades, why has the desire to simply grow economies not changed? At least, not amongst the majority of political and business leaders.  

If we are not trying to progress our economy, are we then, in fact, regressing it? 

I appreciate that many who continue to preach economic growth are coming from a position of wanting to create more ideas, more experiences, more jobs, and more “wealth” (a discussion point for another blog). However, based on our current economic design that growth also means the extraction of more natural resources, the production of more waste and pollution, and the emission of more greenhouse gases into our atmosphere; That’s dumb. We don’t want more of that. In fact, we precisely want far less of that. So much less, that we actually need to extract the waste and pollution we’ve flooded the environment with and regenerate our planet. And that’s not an ideological standpoint, that is a simple fact of physics, chemistry, and biology.  

To remain habitable for human beings (let alone to allow for us to thrive), we need our planet to have clean air, clean water, healthy soils, remain within a certain temperature range, and support millions of other species that we rely on for our own survival. 

Talking about economic progress instead of growth also allows us to discuss the nuances of how to provide people their needs and desires while also reducing inequality, stopping climate change, and regenerating our planet. Because that is progress. That is us improving our society to a stronger, more advanced, more desirable state together — not just blindly growing something that is doing the opposite. 

Written by Founding Director, Nick Morrison