The Wellbeing Economy — Issue 07, full text

FEATURING INTERVIEWS WITH: Wellbeing Economy Alliance Canada • Network of Wellbeing • Scottish Government • Canadian Purpose Economy Project • NATIVA • The Purpose Business • Anglian Water • Therme Group • Inspired Villages

SPECIAL EDITORIALS FROM CONTRIBUTING EDITORS DR. VICTORIA HURTH AND PROF. LORENZO FIORAMONTI From empowering collaborations to embedding purpose on a constitutional level, these nine organizations are advancing a global movement that centres collective wellbeing.

The Wellbeing Economy

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CONTENTS

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

WELLBEING ECONOMY RESOURCES FOR PURPOSE-DRIVEN ORGANIZATIONS Take action toward long-term sustainability for all with these resources

WELLBEING ECONOMY ALLIANCE CANADA Paving the way for Canada’s Wellbeing Economy

MAKING SUSTAINABILITY REAL By: Dr. Victoria Hurth and Professor Lorenzo Fioramonti

NATIVA Rewriting the economic paradigm in Italy and beyond

CANADIAN PURPOSE ECONOMY PROJECT Calling Canadians to engage in the purpose economy

THERME GROUP Creating inclusive wellbeing resort experiences in urban centres

INSPIRED VILLAGES Improving the wellbeing of the UK’s aging population

ISSUE 7 As a purpose-driven marketing agency, Sparx Publishing Group is on a mission to make impact mainstream. Visit our website to learn about our team and how we contribute to wellbeing for all then get in touch to collaborate:

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NETWORK OF WELLBEING Connecting changemakers in the UK to inspire action

SCOTTISH GOVERNMENT Safeguarding future generations with a wellbeing framework

THE PURPOSE BUSINESS Advancing organizational purpose in Asia

ANGLIAN WATER Embedding purpose to achieve wellbeing in the water industry

A PRACTICAL REVOLUTION By: Dr. Victoria Hurth and Professor Lorenzo Fioramonti

ON THE WEB As a member of the purpose-driven community, we're proud of our certifications, recognitions, and partnerships.

The Purpose Led Economy:

Sparx was proud to invite and learn from Dr. Victoria Hurth at the Canadian Securities Exchange’s Summit on Responsible Investment 2023, which took place in Kelowna, British Columbia. Dr. Hurth’s keynote makes for an excellent companion to this edition of the magazine. Catch the replay, “The Purpose Led Economy,” on the CSE TV YouTube channel.

Year in Review: In 2023, Sparx made a real impact, including becoming a member of WEAll, endorsing the Canadian Purpose Economy Project, and unveiling our social purpose statement. Check out our Year in Review 2023 blog post at sparxpg.com/blog to learn more and get an exclusive look at our purpose-driven plans for 2024.

Purpose-Driven Events: On a mission to make the world better? Sparx has put together a list of purpose-driven events so you can advance your impact goals. Visit our blog at sparxpg.

com/blog to check it out.

Support Make The World Better Magazine: Enjoy reading stories of impact? Now you can help support our publication and join a growing purpose-driven community with the Make The World Better Magazine Patreon!

Visit patreon.com/mtwb to check it out.

ISSN 2817-4208 (Print) April 2024, Issue 7

PUBLISHER Sparx Publishing Group Inc. sparxpg.com For advertising rates and placements, please contact us at mtwb@sparxpg.com

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Hamish Khamisa

EDITORS Libby Shabada Michelle Baleka

ART DIRECTOR Elisabeth Choi

PROJECT MANAGER Alexandra Nikitina

PROJECT COORDINATORS Ken Yeung Pauline Macapagal All photo credits to the organizations.

CONTRIBUTORS CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Dr. Victoria Hurth, global sustainability expert and Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership Fellow, and Prof. Lorenzo Fioramonti, Founding Director of the Institute for Sustainability at the University of Surrey (UK)

ANGLIAN WATER Andy Brown, Group Chief Sustainability Officer

CANADIAN PURPOSE ECONOMY PROJECT Mike Rowlands, one of the Founding Champions, President & CEO at Junxion Strategy

INSPIRED VILLAGES Jamie Bunce, CEO

NATIVA Eric Ezechieli, Co-Founder

NETWORK OF WELLBEING Roger Higman, Director

SCOTTISH GOVERNMENT Dr. Gary Gillespie, Director and Scottish Government Chief Economic Adviser

THE PURPOSE BUSINESS Pat Dwyer, Founder

THERME GROUP Duncan Newbury, VP of Brand and Global Marketing Director

WELLBEING ECONOMY ALLIANCE CANADA Tara Campbell, Wellbeing Economies Manager at the David Suzuki Foundation This issue helps advance progress on the following United Nations Sustainable Development Goals:

Welcome to this very special edition of Make The World Better Magazine, which focuses on the Wellbeing Economy. What makes this particular issue stand out from its predecessors is that the companies, organizations, and content in this edition have been curated by two internationally-renowned experts in purpose and wellbeing: Dr. Victoria Hurth and Professor Lorenzo Fioramonti.

The “spark” of this issue began almost a year prior to this issue going to press, when I attended an event organized by the Canadian Purpose Economy Project (an organization also featured in this issue) in Vancouver, British Columbia. It was there that I met Dr. Hurth and was profoundly inspired by her clear and compelling three-level framework on sustainability — an adaptation of the Daly Triangle that elegantly summarizes where we are today in relation to long-term wellbeing for all, where we need to get to, and how to envision getting there. It was simply too good to not share.

In the months that followed, we have been fortunate to work together with Dr. Hurth a few times, including at the Summit on Responsible Investment, hosted by the Canadian Securities Exchange, where she was a keynote speaker and, ultimately, to the collaboration that shaped this special issue. Together with Professor Fioramonti, they have enriched this edition with their thoughtful perspectives on the Wellbeing Economy.

As Editor, I strongly encourage our readers to dive into and share all of the stories featured in this issue. This edition offers a beautiful panorama of the three-level shift of the market economy in action, illustrated by the nine purpose-driven organizations from different regions of the world, all demonstrating that integrating long-term wellbeing for all (sus tainability) into their organizational worldview is possible.

That said, if time is a constraint, please ensure you read “Making Sustainability Real” and “A Practical Revolution,” both pieces by Dr. Hurth and Professor Fioramonti. Combined, these articles bring into hyperfocus the perils of maintaining a “business as usual” approach and offer the clearest arguments in favour of pursuing a Wellbeing Economy.

I cannot thank Dr. Victoria Hurth and Professor Lorenzo Fioramonti enough for sharing generously in their work, wisdom, and efforts to convene the changemakers featured in this issue. Also, I have to express my deep gratitude for all the contributors to and readers of this issue for leaning into the possibility of a Wellbeing Economy.

Finally, I would encourage readers to carry forward the spark that set this edition in motion.

Business as usual is not a viable option, and the faster and farther these stories and ideas showcasing a better alternative travel through social and individual networks, the sooner we can accelerate our collective trajectory toward long-term wellbeing for all people and planet.

Hamish Khamisa Founder, Sparx Publishing Group This edition offers a beautiful panorama of the three-level shift of the market economy in action.

Letter from the Editor Visit our blog for purpose-driven marketing tips that will help amplify your impact story. Plus, discover more changemakers who are making the world better, enjoy takeaways from mission-aligned events, and learn about Sparx’s team and initiatives. Read now:

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FEATURE B Corp Summit 2023. Photo credit: NATIVA

Advancing Meaningful Work and Lives These changemakers are paving the way for a new economic reality.

Welcome to the seventh issue of Make The World Better Magazine! In this edition, uncover the stories of changemakers from around the world who are reimagining economic outcomes by putting people and planet first.

Read on to learn about nine incredible organizations, networks, and projects that are laying the foundation for the Wellbeing Economy in Canada, empowering collaboration and action among changemakers in the UK, centring wellbeing at the government level in Scotland, rallying Canadians around purpose, making purpose-driven waves in Italy and beyond, demonstrating the power of organizational purpose in Asia, striving toward wellbeing in the water industry, bringing wellbeing resort experiences to urban settings, and supporting purpose and wellbeing in the later-stage of life. Plus, learn about the Wellbeing Economy, including the importance of governance, making sustainability a reality, and how dreaming meets practicality in two special editorial pieces from guest authors Dr. Victoria Hurth and Professor Lorenzo Fioramonti.

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 370001) 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 offthose 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.

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.

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 defi - nition 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.

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.

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 stuffwe 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 eﬃ ciency, 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 free-doms 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, offlimits because the BAU market economy puts the health of the values shared resources “offbalance 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 alleviat-ing 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, broad-ened 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

PURPOSE-DRIVEN ORGANISATIONS WISE AND ETHICAL METHOD = ENDS, MEANS AND METHOD PURPOSE LOGIC (LOGIC 3) BAU/CSR SHORT-TERM FINANCIAL LOGIC (LOGIC 1) BAU/ESV/ESG STAKEHOLDERISM:

LONG-TERM FINANCIAL LOGIC (LOGIC 2) Long-term wellbeing for all people and planet (sustainability)

ULTIMATE ENDS Financial & manufactured capital

INTERMEDIATE ENDS Financial & manufactured capital

INTERMEDIATE MEANS ULTIMATE MEANS Environmental and social systems Natural, human & social capital Oﬀ Limits?

Oﬀ Balance Sheet?

1. ISO Technical Committee 309 (2021). ISO 37000:2021 Governance of organizations — Guidance.

2. The British Standards Institution. (2022). PAS 808: Purpose-Driven Organisations: Worldviews, Principles and Behaviours.

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”2 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.

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.

victoriahurth.com cisl.cam.ac.uk/directory/dr-victoria-hurth-fellow twitter.com/drvictoriahurth (@DrVictoriaHurth) linkedin.com/in/dr-victoria-hurth-07a16b7 lorenzofioramonti.org twitter.com/lofioramonti (@lofioramonti) linkedin.com/in/lorenzo-fioramonti-b5366b259 Institute for Sustainability: surrey.

ac.uk/institute-sustainability linktr.ee/institutesustainability

THE WELLBEING ECONOMY Wellbeing Economy Alliance Canada Paving the way for Canada’s Wellbeing Economy

The roots of our economic system run deep, perpetuating environmental, climate, and social crises. However, we have more power to rewrite our economic story than most people realize. With creativity, open-mindedness, and collaboration, we can build an economic system that helps people and planet thrive.

We spoke with Tara Campbell, Wellbeing Economies Manager at the David Suzuki Foundation, about how the Wellbeing Economy Alliance Canada is building a hub to champion the global Wellbeing Economy movement in Canada.

What inspired you and your leadership to start advocating for the Wellbeing Economy?

My work advocating for wellbeing economies is housed at an environmental non-profit, the David Suzuki Foundation.1 Some people are surprised when I tell them what I do and for whom: why is an environmental non-profit weighing in on economic issues? It makes sense when we understand that our current profit- and growth-seeking economic system is a massive force structuring our relationship to the environment. This search for growth leads to endless extraction, planned obsolescence and throwaway culture, and alienation from land and place.

As an organization, our mission is to equitably protect nature’s diversity and the wellbeing of all life, now and for the future. We know that to transform society’s relationship to the environment we have to work on the roots of that relationship. We see our economic system as one of the roots perpetuating the intersecting environmental and climate crises we find ourselves in today.

This interest in the economy led to an aﬃ liation with the Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WEAll)2 — a global collaboration of people working for transitions to economies that prioritize people and planet.

WEAll has been doing some amazing work over the past few years developing new public narratives around the economy.

WEAll understands that this global movement will be mediated through place-based organizing. As part of that effort, we are currently working on launching a WEAll Canada hub.

We are motivated by the idea of wellbeing economies not only because we see them as necessary for the environment, but also because we know they will make life so much better! The dominant economic system simply doesn’t meet people’s needs.

Even in a wealthy country like Canada, many people struggle to find affordable housing, food, and energy. Many others struggle to find decent and meaningful work. We know it doesn’t have to be this way, and we want to tell a different story of what our economic system could look like.

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 are working on a complex challenge that is massive in scope and it’s nearly impossible to attribute changes happening in the world to our actions. Because of this, we try to work on actions to create pathways for change, enabling conditions rather than outcomes. Our largest impact in this space has been cultivating meaningful relationships between individuals and organizations working for economic transformation and creating containers for imagination.3 One of my most memorable recent projects, Toronto Imaginal Transitions,4 involved working with a small group of diverse community organizers and innovators to gather, build trust, and push the boundaries of their imaginations around what a Wellbeing Economy could look like in Toronto. One of these gatherings Even in a wealthy country like Canada, many people struggle to find affordable housing, food, and energy. Many others struggle to find decent and meaningful work. We know it doesn’t have to be this way, and we want to tell a different story of what our economic system could look like.

A dinner where a group of organizers, artists, entrepreneurs, and a Toronto city councillor gathered to dream about local wellbeing economies.

manifested as a magical dinner party where artists, organizers, entrepreneurs, and a city councillor spent an evening dreaming together. While this didn’t immediately lead to any big shifts in the local economic system, we worked on the conditions for change by planting seeds of these ideas and creating the foundation for collaboration.

How do you feel that shifting to a Wellbeing Economy will help make the world better?

Our economic system prioritizes profit and growth over community needs, including our need for a healthy environment.

Transitioning to a Wellbeing Economy inverts this. The priority becomes meeting not only the needs of people but also that of the land and non-human creatures with whom we share the planet. It is important to stress here that prioritizing needs means not simply the needs of those of us in the Global North or those of us who are settlers.

While pathways for economic transition are always a source of debate, my view is that it will require everyone to get involved and deliberate over what we want and how to get there. This means that in addition to creating a viable future for our shared planet and ensuring everyone has enough to live in dignity and comfort, the transition to a Wellbeing Economy might see an expansion of the realm of democracy too.

I don’t see the transition to a Wellbeing Economy as an austere vision. I suspect that if we prioritize wellbeing over economic growth we will develop deeper networks of care, work less, and have more freedom over our time. I like to see this from the perspective of philosopher Kate Soper, who advocates for an “alternative hedonism”5 — a different vision for the good life that doesn’t depend on consumption.

On one occasion during the Imaginal Transitions project, we gathered around a ﬁ re and built stories of future economies from the perspective of various local landmarks, animals, and characters.

1. Read the David Suzuki Foundation article from Make The World Better Magazine at sparxpg.com/blog.

2. Visit the Wellbeing Economy Alliance website, weall.org.

3. See the Imagination Infrastructures website, imaginationinfrastructuring.com.

4. Campbell, T. & Hsu, C. (2022). Toronto Imaginal Transitions: Design For a Time Between Worlds.

5. Soper, K. (2022). Post-Growth Living: For an Alternative Hedonism.

6. Learn more about The Cornerstone Indicator Concept at darkmatterlabs.org/Cornerstone-Indicators.

What are some of the challenges you typically face in advocating for the Wellbeing Economy?

For many audiences, I find even suggesting the economic system could be different is often quickly rejected as unachievable. There seems to be a common sentiment that we have tried other economic models, they haven’t worked, and this is the best we have or that the system is too big to change. I think one primary purpose of our hub will be to support people, organizations, and institutions to see the current economic system as something that humans have designed. We can design it differently.

There are a lot of myths and challenges to overcome, but we don’t need to start with a blank slate. There are so many functioning systems to point to as places of learning: the Cleveland Model, Indigenous economies, mutual aid networks, worker co-operatives, etc. Creativity, open-mindedness, and collaboration are how we will overcome the challenges we face as we push for change.

Are there any upcoming initiatives or projects related to your work/the Wellbeing Economy you'd like to share?

Many like-minded people are working for economic transition in Canada, which is really encouraging! We have been mapping the Canadian landscape of people, organizations, and networks working for wellbeing economies in some way or another, and we will be releasing an interactive map later this year. You will be able to find that on our website once it is released. We hope the map can be a tool for anyone looking to get inspired by all the work already happening.

We’ve also started a collaboration with Dark Matter Labs, a global non-profit building infrastructure for a new civic economy. Dark Matter Labs has been piloting an initiative called Cornerstone Indicators,6 which involves bringing a community together to reimagine the metrics and indicators used to strive toward community wellbeing. They have experimented with this approach in Sweden and Scotland, and we are interested in piloting this with a community in Canada this year. We are also developing open-source tools that anyone could use if they are interested in these kinds of approaches.

What can people do to help spread word about or take action toward transitioning to the Wellbeing Economy? How can they support your mission?

We have been in an incubation period with the WEAll Canada hub for a while now and are getting ready to open it up for engagement soon. If the notion of a Wellbeing Economy is of interest, please come join and participate! This could be by subscribing to our newsletter or X (formerly Twitter) account to stay informed about wellbeing economies–related news, or coming to events and building relationships with other people advancing wellbeing economies throughout the country.

I think one primary purpose of our hub will be to support people, organizations, and institutions to see the current economic system as something that humans have designed. We can design it differently.

Creativity, open-mindedness, and collaboration are how we will overcome the challenges we face as we push for change.

weallcanada.org twitter.com/weallcanada (@WEAllCanada) Newsletter: weallcanada.org/contact/#latest-news

THE WELLBEING ECONOMY Network of Wellbeing Connecting changemakers in the UK to inspire action

I n the battle for a sustainable future, negative messages tend to take the lead. 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 diﬀ erence.

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 cam-paigning 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 diﬃ cult 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 Together1 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.2 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 film3 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 Rise4 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.

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.

ShareFests, like this one in Totnes, UK, bring people together to connect, save money, and prevent waste.

Attendees at this ShareFest in 2018 took action to prevent waste by repairing broken items.

1. Watch "Building Wellbeing Together" on the Network of Wellbeing YouTube channel.

2. Check out Share Shed at shareshed.org.uk.

3. Watch "Share Shed - A Library of Things" on the Share Shed - A Library of Things YouTube channel.

4. Learn more at networkofwellbeing.org/eden-rise.

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.

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?

We have a presence on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. People can follow us on social media or sign up for our newsletter.

We also welcome contributors to our blog and love to publicize events organized by others.

We live through collaboration and are open to suggestions for partnerships of all kinds.

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.

networkofwellbeing.org facebook.com/NetworkOfWellbeing twitter.com/NetwrkWellbeing (@NetwrkWellbeing) linkedin.com/company/network-of-wellbeing instagram.com/networkofwellbeing (@networkofwellbeing) youtube.com/

NETW0RK0FWELLBEING (@NETWORKOFWELLBEING) Newsletter: networkofwellbeing.

org/get-involved Bottom: Connecting with the natural world is vital for our wellbeing.

Right: 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.

Amplify your message here Advertise in Make The World Better Magazine On a mission to spark positive change?

We know a great audience for your initiatives.

Catch the attention of like-minded individuals by advertising your purpose-driven organization in an upcoming edition of Make The World Better Magazine.

mtwb@sparxpg.com Access our Media Kit:

THE WELLBEING ECONOMY Sources:

1. Gallup 2023

2. NPR THE SEARCH FOR ORGANIZATIONAL PURPOSE AND MEANING According to a 2022 study by Gallup, only 32% of employees are engaged with their work, an 11% drop from 2020.1 Stephanie Frias, Chief People Officer at Lyra Health, believes a central question for getting people engaged at work is "How do you instill meaning in that work?"2 The Wellbeing Economy aims to unleash meaningful work and lives for everyone and emphasizes purpose as a key pillar of achieving this. By embedding purpose-driven initiatives and goals in the workplace, employees will feel that their work truly makes a positive difference in the world.

FACTS Sources:

1. Fortune 2. EY Global 3. Deloitte But with the traditional focus on profit-first, can purpose take a leading role in organizations?

Encouragingly, only 7% of Fortune 500 CEOs believe their companies should “mainly focus on making profits and not be distracted by social goals,”1 while a survey by EY / Harvard Business Review Analytic Services found that 90% of executives recognize the importance of having "an aspirational reason for being which inspires and provides a call to action for an organization…and provides benefit to society,"2 and a Deloitte report shared that 78% of individuals said they would prefer to work for a purpose-driven company.3 This shows that business leaders and employees are increasingly aligned in seeing the need to embrace organizational purpose which is an important step toward building the Wellbeing Economy.

THE WELLBEING ECONOMY Scottish Government Safeguarding future generations with a wellbeing framework

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 ﬂ ourish.

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 interde-pendencies 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),1 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,2 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 Talk3 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) in developing 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 The ﬁ rst public WEGo event, which took place in Edinburgh. Scotland's First Minister and Iceland's Prime Minister spoke about their commitment to collaborating to build wellbeing economies.

1. Learn more at gov.scot/wellbeing-economy-governments-wego.

2. See Scotland's National Performance Framework website, nationalperformance.gov.scot.

3. Watch former First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon’s TED Talk, “Why governments should prioritize well-being” at go.ted.com/nicolasturgeon.

4. See gov.scot/groups/business-new-deal-for-business-group.

5. Scottish Government. (2022). Wellbeing Economy Toolkit: Supporting place-based economic strategy and policy development.

6. Scottish Government. (2023). The Wellbeing Economy Monitor - December 2023 update.

7. Learn more at gov.scot/policies/climate-change/just-transition.

8. Learn more at gov.scot/policies/cities-regions/community-wealth-building.

9. Learn more at gov.scot/policies/fair-and-inclusive-workplaces.

10. Scottish Government. (2022). Keeping the Promise: to our children, young people and families.

11. Learn more at gov.scot/policies/social-security/scottish-child-payment.

12. Learn more at gov.scot/policies/early-education-and-care.

13. Learn more at gov.scot/publications/scottish-attainment-challenge-local-stretch-aims-2023-24-2025-26/pages/3.

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.

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 4 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?

There are so many policies to share.

I would highlight our Wellbeing Economy Toolkit5 and Monitor,6 the just transition plans7 for sectors in Scotland, the place-based work relating to community wealth building,8 fair and inclusive workplaces,9 and the work with the business community as key economic policies. However, wider policies, such as The Promise implementation plan,10 Scottish Child Payment,11 expansion of free childcare,12 educational attainment,13 and supporting policies to reduce inequality and child poverty are all key.

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.

Scotland joined forces with Slovenia, Sweden, Costa Rica, New Zealand, and Australia at the ﬁ rst meeting to establish the Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WEAll).

All journeys start with a first step, so feel empowered to engage, question, and challenge.

gov.scot facebook.com/TheScottishGovernment twitter.com/scotgov (@scotgov) linkedin.com/company/thescottishgovernment instagram.com/scotgov (@scotgov) youtube.com/user/scottishgovernment (@scottishgovernment)

https://kinshift.ca/Your call to accountability and meaningful action towards change

ELEMENTS OF TRUTH:

BEFORE RECONCILIATION Online workshops starting Feb 6 & Apr 18, 2024 Connect with us: kinshift.ca IndigenEYEZ is an Indigenous-led non-proﬁt initiative whose vision is an intergenerational legacy of well-being for Indigenous peoples. Through a variety of programs and workshops, IndigenEYEZ aims to transform communities and help people draw strength from their Indigeneity.

kinSHIFT, an IndigenEYEZ enterprise, supports settlers who are committed to building respectful relationships with Indigenous peoples. Proceeds from workshops go toward IndigenEYEZ training and programs for Indigenous peoples.

LEARN & GROW • Build right relations with Indigenous peoples • Uncover the impacts of colonization • Reﬂect on social positioning & power dynamics • Deepen awareness of micro-aggressions https://kinshift.ca/Your call to accountability and meaningful action towards change

ELEMENTS OF TRUTH:

BEFORE RECONCILIATION Online workshops starting May 2 & 9, 2024 Connect with us: kinshift.ca IndigenEYEZ is an Indigenous-led non-proﬁt initiative whose vision is an intergenerational legacy of well-being for Indigenous peoples. Through a variety of programs and workshops, IndigenEYEZ aims to transform communities and help people draw strength from their Indigeneity.

LEARN & GROW • Build right relations with Indigenous peoples • Uncover the impacts of colonization • Reﬂect on social positioning & power dynamics • Deepen awareness of micro-aggressions

THE WELLBEING ECONOMY Canadian Purpose Economy Project Calling Canadians to engage in the purpose economy

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.

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, staffengagement 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.”1 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 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.

Canadian Purpose Economy Project Co-Founder and “Purpose Champion”

Mike Rowlands addresses The Partnership Conference, October 2023.

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, insuﬃ cient 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.

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 Canadian Purpose Economy Project Co-Founders and “Purpose Champions”

Mike Rowlands and Coro Strandberg speak to Social Impact Professionals Canada, November 2023.

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.

1. Read "A Call to Purpose," on the Canadian Purpose Economy Project webpage, purposeeconomy.ca/a-call-to-purpose.

2. Read "Making the World Work" from May 22, 2012, on the Buckminster Fuller Institute website, bfi.org.

3. Canadian Purpose Economy Project. (2023). Propelling Purpose On The Path to Net Zero: Globe 2022 10 X 10 Roadmap.

obsolete.”2 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 conve-ners, 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.3 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.

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.

purposeeconomy.ca twitter.com/canadapep (@canadapep) linkedin.com/company/canadian-purpose-economy-project

THE WELLBEING ECONOMY NATIVA Rewriting the economic paradigm in Italy and beyond The NATIVA team in 2022.

Our current economic systems are extractive and the focus on profit can stiﬂ e 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,1 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 2023.

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, illy-caff è, 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 towards 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, influ- encing 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 Eric Ezechieli (left) and Paolo Di Cesare (right), founders of NATIVA.

The launch of CO2alition.

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?

1. Behrens III, W., Meadows, D.H., Meadows, D.L., & Randers, J. (1972). The Limits to Growth. The Club of Rome.

2. See the CO2alition website, co2alizione.eco.

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,2 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.

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.”

nativalab.com/en facebook.com/Nativalab twitter.com/nativalab (@nativalab) linkedin.com/company/nativalab 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.

Part of the NATIVA team.

THE WELLBEING ECONOMY The Purpose Business Advancing organizational purpose in Asia

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.

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 work1 and educational outreach. We are particularly proud of our “Purpose and Values” work with the Philippines-based company, Universal Robina Corporation (URC),2 one of the largest branded consumer food and beverage product companies in the Philippines. Together with our strategic partner Within People,3 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 Pat Dwyer, Founder and Director of the Purpose Business and Purpose and Sustainability Leader.

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.

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.

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.

We've witnessed remarkable shifts in our clients over the past eight years, moving from extreme conservatism to viewing sustainability as a strategic imperative.

1. Check out thepurposebusiness.com/case-studies.

2. Visit the Universal Robina website, urc.com.ph.

3. Learn more about Within People at withinpeople.com.

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, quan-tifying 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."

thepurposebusiness.com linkedin.com/company/the-purpose-business 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.

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.

ORGANIZATIONAL PURPOSE IN ACTION THE WELLBEING ECONOMY More and more companies are actively changing course to embed and practice organizational purpose, as demonstrated by the B Corp Movement.

B Corporations are certified purpose-driven businesses that are contributing to the global transition to a Wellbeing Economy to benefit all people, communities, and the planet.

Since January 2020, B Lab Global has received more than 6,000 applications for certification from businesses, a 38% increase from the 2018-2019 period.1 Currently, there are over 8,000 B Corps across 96 countries and 162 industries with over 700,000 employees, worldwide.2 Sources:

1. B Lab Europe 2. B Corporation

Source:

1. B Lab Global 2022 Annual Report By following best practices when it comes to social issues, the environment, and governance, B Corps are a powerful force in driving positive change.

B Corps are 3.9x more likely to explicitly incorporate social and environmental performance into managers’ job descriptions and 2.4x more likely to include social or environmental issues material in employee training.1 The focus on purpose, good governance, and long-term sustainability for all extends beyond certified B Corps.

As of 2022, 15,000 businesses globally are now benefit corporations or local equivalents.1 Together, we can drive change at all levels and pave the way for a global Wellbeing Economy.

FACTS

THE WELLBEING ECONOMY Anglian Water Embedding purpose to achieve wellbeing in the water industry

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 Oﬃ cer 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.

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 oﬃ ce; 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 recommend-ing 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 808:2022 Purpose-driven organizations. Worldviews, principles and behaviours for delivering sustainability.1 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.

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.

The solar installation at the Grafh am Water reservoir in Cambridgeshire now generates 11 GWh of solar energy annually, enough clean electricity to power more than 3,000 homes a year. It is made up of 43,000 solar panels across 465 tables and 250 miles of cable, which feed directly into the Grafh am Water Treatment Works.

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,2 and even the role of sewage in creating sustainable aviation fuel. For me, though, it still comes 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.

Andy Brown talking with an attendee at the Sustainable Schools Conference in May 2023.

1. The British Standards Institution. (2022). PAS 808:2022 Purpose-driven organizations. Worldviews, principles and behaviours for delivering sustainability.

2. Anglian Water. (n.d.). Water Smart Communities.

3. See “PAS 808: purpose-driven organisations” public group on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/groups/12693671.

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”3 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.

anglianwater.co.uk facebook.com/AnglianWater twitter.com/AnglianWater (@AnglianWater) linkedin.com/company/anglianwater instagram.com/anglianwater (@anglianwater) youtube.com/loveeverydrop (@anglianwater) Anglian Water’s Ingoldisthorpe Wetland.

Unveiled in 2018 and created in partnership with Norfolk River’s Trust, their ﬂ agship wetland was the ﬁ rst of its kind in England and naturally cleans 1.4 million litres of water a day. Treated water passes from Anglian’s recycling centre to the wetland to be ﬁ ltered even more and gets cleaned by the wetland plants before it’s returned to the River Ingol. To ensure their region has the best resilience against climate change, Anglian is working toward 26 new wetlands by 2030.

Therme Group Creating inclusive wellbeing resort experiences in urban centres

Crises surrounding collective wellbeing are sharply felt in urban contexts, where loneliness, isolation, and anxiety are commonly reported. Eﬀ orts 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,1 and that prolonged loneliness (a common aﬄ iction in modern cities) can have the same impact on mortality as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day.2 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.

Therme Manchester will have a transformative eﬀ ect on the city as the UK’s ﬁ rst city-based wellbeing resort, featuring a next-generation waterpark, thermal bathing, and a wellbeing spa.

The Herbarium Festival, a new ﬂ agship 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.

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.

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.

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 are planning to deliver our first North American location 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 The Herbarium Festival in 2023 was created as a celebration of the active sauna community at Therme Bucharest.

Pictured with Dr. Robert C. Hanea, Chairman and CEO of Therme Group, is Professor Max Lu, President and Vice- Chancellor of the University of Surrey.

Sauna Fest 2023 welcomed over 60 sauna masters from around the globe to Therme Bucharest to deliver over 300 multi-sensory shows designed to stimulate and entertain sauna enthusiasts.

1. DeRubeis, R, Miao, L., Turner, D., & Xu, C. (2023). "Urbanicity and depression: A global meta-analysis." Journal of Aﬀ ective Disorders, 340, 299-311.

2. Johnson, S. (November 2023), “WHO declares loneliness a ‘global public health concern’,” The Guardian, theguardian.com.

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 desti-nations. Therme is really something that has to be experienced to be truly understood, and we’d love to welcome you!

thermegroup.com twitter.com/ThermeGroup (@ThermeGroup) linkedin.com/company/therme-group instagram.com/thermegroup (@thermegroup) youtube.com/@thermegroup (@thermegroup) Top: Therme Canada | Toronto is designed to be a family-friendly experience, focused on boosting the physical and mental wellbeing of all who visit by creating a natural urban oasis where people of all ages can have fun and unwind from their busy lifestyles. Bottom: Guests at Therme Bucharest enjoy an aqua ﬁ t class. Designed for all ages and abilities, this is one of the most popular activities in the health and ﬁ tness programming in the resort.

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.

Inspired Villages Improving the wellbeing of the UK’s aging population

I f 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.

What inspired you 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 Aerial shot of Inspired Villages' net-zero village, Millﬁ eld Green, where you can see all the PV Panels.

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.

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 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.

Inspired resident Jan Grayson on her balcony at Elderswell Village, Bedfordshire.

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.

Left: Jamie Bunce.

Bottom: Inspired resident from Ledian Gardens, Kent, Linda Green, 76, with Inspired Wellbeing Navigator, Duncan Vitorian.

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.

inspiredvillages.co.uk facebook.com/inspiredlifeuk twitter.com/inspiredlifeuk (@InspiredLifeUK) linkedin.com/company/inspiredlifeuk instagram.com/inspiredlifeuk (@inspiredlifeuk) youtube.com/@marketinginspiredvillages9351 (@marketinginspiredvillages9351)

THE WELLBEING ECONOMY Wellbeing Economy, Purpose-Driven Organizations, and Meaningful Work:

A Practical Revolution By: Dr. Victoria Hurth and Professor Lorenzo Fioramonti

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.

To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

— Buckminster Fuller I n our opening editorial, we outlined how a Wellbeing Economy is aligned with a sustainable future and an eﬃ cient, eﬀ ective economy and how purpose-driven organizations operationalize this economy. In turn, purpose-driven organizations unleash and are dependent on the energy of meaningful work and lives of individuals, households, and communities. As well as being the power behind a Wellbeing Economy, the ability to contribute to and engage with purpose-driven organizations directly increases wellbeing by bringing a sense of usefulness, joy, and community through our daily activities.

This is in contrast to the conventional wisdom that by increasing our financial income, we can purchase more consuming goods as a way to achieve a good life.

This is why we advocate a three-level shift in the macro (Wellbeing Economy), meso (Purpose-Driven Organizations), and micro (Meaningful Work and Lives) realms of the market economy, thus turning a vicious circle (the current consumption-based economy) into a virtuous one, based on long-term wellbeing for all (sustainability).

Some may feel that we are outlining some unattainable utopia. We are optimists but please don’t mistake our optimism for naivety — we recognize that there is still a long way to go, and the ultimate path is not certain.

However, we also know that there are no fundamental barriers in the way of achieving this shift if we collectively wanted to. It merely rests on collective imagination and faith that positive change is in our hands.

The various insights revealed in this issue of Make The World Better Magazine were compiled to feed this faith and imagination. While they are just a partial window on the change that is possible, they represent a revolution that has been underway for some time.

Once you tune in, you can witness everywhere, at all levels, and all around the world.

The Macro Level At a macro level, the Wellbeing Economy revolution is about a tangible shift away from governing as if GDP is the core objective — as if this is a good way of understanding if the economy is achieving long-term wellbeing for all — toward directly measuring and governing wellbeing outcomes. This macro-level governance needs setting at national as well as local levels of government.

The insights in this magazine from the people working on the Wellbeing Economy Alliance Canada, the Network of Wellbeing, and the Canadian Purpose Economy Project all detail the widespread and expanding action to make the Wellbeing Economy a reality. The articles help bring to life the motivations for the Wellbeing Economy at the macro level and key ways people can keep up to date and get involved, from signing up for newsletters to engaging with key resources.

Beyond Scotland and Canada, countries that are spotlighted in this magazine, the Wellbeing Economy Governments (WEGo) also include Wales, Iceland, New Zealand, and Finland. In addition, a number of countries outside of this group have been pushing to develop the foundations of a Wellbeing Economy. For example, the EU has been pushing this agenda concertedly since its 2009 Beyond GDP project and the UK developed Quality of Life indicators as part of its Measures of National Wellbeing program in 2010.

The work happening through the Wellbeing Economy Alliance and beyond builds on practical work that began in the 1990s with the UN’s Human Development Index, and in Asia, where Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness (GNH) framework has long been a beacon of change toward a Wellbeing Economy. What is hugely important is that once you start properly measuring what matters, you realize how much real value is being lost through blindly growing financial income as if this will automatically result in wellbeing outcomes.

Work has been expanding over the years at national and local administrative levels to expose “social return on investment.”

These and other multi-capital accounting experiments have been gaining sophistication over the years, and we are starting to get consensus at the international level on the best approaches1 that put wellbeing as the central currency.

Action is also being taken by the world-renowned Club of Rome, which has spearheaded the global debate on economic transformation since the 1970s and openly advocates for a Wellbeing Economy to replace the contemporary growth-focused market economy in its latest book, Earth for All.

The Meso Level While the shift in ambition at the level of the macro market economy is vital, this needs to be made real through purpose-driven organizations, including governments as organizations. Purpose-driven organizations by definition routinize decisions that support the Wellbeing Economy. As we outlined in our previous editorial, it is governance that routinizes action toward an objective (within clear parameters), oversees whether or not this has been achieved, and is accountable

for that fact to relevant others. In this nested system, we need the right direction, oversight, and accountability at the macro level of governance in order to motivate and retain the right governance at the level of organizations where the value-creation work happens.

Recognizing this deep interconnection between the Wellbeing Economy and purpose-driven organizations, Mike Rowlands, Coro Strandberg, and the team at the Canadian Purpose Economy Project have been working to convene and amplify the voices of prominent CEOs and other organizational members to lobby for a macro environment that can help purpose-driven organizations thrive. Given that Canada has a history of being a Wellbeing Economy visionary, as Tara Campbell from WEAll Canada outlined, and that the purpose-driven business community is very active, this is a context where change could be supercharged.

At the operational level, inspiring stories of purpose-driven organizations working hard to make the Wellbeing Economy real at a meso level have been brought to life in this magazine by NATIVA, The Purpose Business, Therme Group, Anglian Water, and Inspired Villages. Together they help illustrate in real terms what business models look like when they exist to make a contribution to long-term wellbeing for all while ensuring they achieve that purpose in a way that protects and enhances the assets they rely on.

Eric Ezechieli from NATIVA and Andy Brown from Anglian Water illuminated the role that the legal context plays in anchoring decisions to a clear, durable, and dedicated purpose. For NATIVA, the first certified B Corp in Europe, the Benefit Corporation legal form has been a central pillar of driving change. For Anglian Water, as one specific company on a purpose-driven journey, it has been about changing their constitution within traditional legal form and then using the British Standard in purpose-driven organizations, “PAS 808:2022 Purpose-driven organizations.

Worldviews, principles and behaviours for delivering sustainability” (PAS 808)2 to embed this across the company.

Regardless of whether you can change your legal form, it is the governance and management practices that make purpose, and therefore the Wellbeing Economy, real in day-to-day decisions. Like NATIVA, Pat Dwyer outlined how The Purpose EOQ Congress in Porto, 2023.

Given that Canada has a history of being a wellbeing economy visionary, as Tara Campbell from WEAll Canada outlined, and that the purpose-driven business community is very active, this is a context where change could be supercharged.

Business is itself a purpose-driven organization that works with a wide range of organizations to support their lived purpose journey. While both work globally, NATIVA is more European-centric while The Purpose Business focuses on the change happening in Asia. Together these demonstrate the global nature of work to bring about the Wellbeing Economy through purpose-driven organizations.

What these stories also well demonstrate is the blue sky thinking and hyper-innovation that sweeps in when you flip to a purpose logic of decision-making that is wellbeing, and, therefore, sustainability-oriented. Product and service ideas and the scope of collaborators open up as the business-as-usual (BAU) way of thinking about markets shifts from a marketplace of potential financial income capture to a marketplace of potential wellbeing outcomes. In addition, decisions start to become bounded by hard parameters that make the protection and enhancement of social and environmental systems (like healthy water systems) and the health of stakeholders a non-negotiable limitation.

These parameters shape business model design and all strategy to achieve the purpose — thereby making sure value isn’t created through innovation in one place but destroyed through operations to achieve it.

The existing system that promotes asset-stripping of our shared resources in order to make financial profit makes it diﬃ cult to operate within parameters that protect social and environmental systems.

At the same time, with the right mindset, research shows creativity is heightened with hard parameters. Furthermore, the expanded innovation mindset of purpose and freedom from old ways of thinking that purpose unlocks means that these organizations can find ways around problems others can’t see and gives energy to sustain grand plans.

If you are purpose-driven, then you also care as much about governing for healthy stocks and flows of non-financial capital as financial capital, as well as ensuring the business model operates within social and environmental thresholds of health. You count what matters, you recognize you can’t always count it and seek multi-stakeholder insights, and you make decisions based on that fuller view. This is also the basis of being able to comply with the oncoming ESG reporting agenda, which, while starting out as an investor risk and values agenda, is ultimately about society saying to organizations that they can only exist if they can prove that they are not asset-stripping our collective long-term wellbeing. Purpose-driven organizations do this as part of their core processes and are set up to weather this revolution in reporting better than others.

By changing the objective and the parameters, which are the basis of strategy (i.e. how to achieve an objective within parameters) the rationale for action: the “business case” is also fundamentally changed in purpose-driven organizations.

This goes hand in hand with leaning on the raft of new multi-capital accounting systems that have been emerging over the years.

Reflecting the shift from GDP at the macro level, we’ve had a couple decades of serious innovation in organizational-level accounting: everything from the Environmental Profit and Loss Account (EP&L) spearheaded by Puma, to full multi-capital accounting processes mainstreamed by organizations like the once-prominent International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) and the Capitals Coalition, to recent pushes to provide estimated costs of externalities in the notes to the accounts in order to fulfill director duties to assure accounts are “True and Fair.”3 One further striking aspect of what characterizes purpose-driven organizations is the collaborative approach taken to bring communities of practice closer together to drive advanced change. All contributions to this issue of Make The World Better Magazine in some way exposed supercharged collaboration and co-creation.

Nowhere is this taking root more seriously than in the national standards-building work to build and expose the emerging consensus on the governance and management needed at the meso level. The British Standard, PAS 808, can be freely downloaded and was designed to be applicable globally and in any organization.

However, while that was the intention, it is only when the question of “how is a purpose-driven organization governed and managed” posed at an international level can we really know what the consensus on this is. Twenty twenty-four may be the year this process kicks offwithin ISO (the non-governmental process of consensus building made up of 167 countries). Any pre-work to scrutinize and experiment with PAS 808 is a way to prepare for this, and you can join the implementors group on LinkedIn.4 Professor Lorenzo Fioramonti.

1. Nicholls, J. & Carpenter, B. (September 2023). Impact Transparency in Public Sector Accounting.

2. The British Standards Institution. (2022). PAS 808: Purpose-Driven Organisations: Worldviews, Principles and Behaviours.

3. Learn more about Social Value International (SVI)'s True and Fair campaign at socialvalueint.org/true-and-fair.

4. Check out the “PAS 808: purpose-driven organisations” group on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/groups/12693671.

The Micro Level The macro Wellbeing Economy provides the structure for the meso-level purpose-driven organizations to flourish, and this, in turn, unlocks enhanced meaningful work and lives — and hence, enhanced direct wellbeing — for those who work for, buy from, live near, or are impacted by them.

Duncan Newbury from Therme Group and Jamie Bunce from Inspired Villages brought colour to this by describing how being in service to a world of long-term wellbeing for all has led to business models that seek to enhance wellbeing directly. Both are using science and experimentation to understand more and more about what fulfills us as humans. They are brilliant examples of how businesses can flourish precisely because they care most about the wellbeing of those they touch with their daily activities.

While there has been decades of concerted research and practical innovation on the topic of meaningful work and lives, this has not yet been properly connected as a global movement and certainly has not been properly integrated with the meso level of purpose-driven organizations and the macro level of the Wellbeing Economy — the levels which underpin whether or not we can use our individual efforts to make sustainability a reality.

To all those working directly in advancing meaningful work and lives, we would love to see recognition for the work you do and for your work to directly feed into and from the meso and macro levels described here.

Sparking the Three-Level Shift The three-level shift we have described in detail is the necessary result of a period of economic paradigm “flux” that we have lived through in the last couple of decades. A period where business-as-usual thinking has de-teriorated in the face of the wide-scale social and environmental system breakdown that it drives. It has felt confusing and diﬃ cult to move beyond describing “what is wrong”

to being able to precisely describe what the alternative looks like. We believe that this is what the three-level shift represents.

We hope we have helped convince you that while there is, of course, a long way to go, we already have the base foundations in place and the basis to enact rapid change globally. In many ways, this is not about creating something new but taking away the barriers that stop the positive outcomes we as humans are motivated by.

Imagine, for example, those who went into politics to improve their communities but became stuck in a game of sacrific- ing what matters to improve the national accounts. Imagine the number of purpose-driven organizations that couldn’t get offthe ground because of a structured competitive environment that allowed profit-making from social and environmental harm. Or the entrepreneurs who put vast amounts of energy into solving a genuine wellbeing problem but whose only option was to borrow toxic finance from those who co-opted their governance for financial income capture. Think for a moment about the average person who would love to go to bed feeling that they didn’t just pay the bills but used their time, energy, and skills to contribute positively to the world around them, rather than feeling worse and worse about the effects of their talent. This is the potential waiting to be unlocked. And the first biggest barrier that we need to overcome is that the majority of the world understands this and can see the way forward outlined in this magazine.

In summary, we believe all the conditions are in place to reform the market economy at the macro, meso, and micro levels. What is missing is the clarity about the common goal, which we hope this edition provides some small impact on. It is this clarity that will build the unity and confidence for the hard work of directing, overseeing, and being accountable for this transformation — in other words, doing the hard work of changing how we govern the economy and organizations. More than that, this starts with how we govern ourselves as individuals and citizens, the ultimate governing body.

Dr. Victoria Hurth is a global expert; thought leader in sustainability, ESG, and purpose governance; and Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership Fellow.

surrey.ac.uk/institute-sustainability linktr.ee/institutesustainability We believe all the conditions are in place to reform the market economy at the macro, meso, and micro levels.

What is missing is the clarity about the common goal, which we hope this edition provides some small impact on.

(Your Organization Here) Be featured in Make The World Better Magazine On a mission to make the world better?

We’d love to amplify your impact.

Share your purpose-driven story in an upcoming edition of Make The World Better Magazine to shed light on critical issues, boost awareness of game-changing initiatives, and inspire others.

To be featured, get in touch with us here:

mtwb@sparxpg.com

Wellbeing Economy Resources for Purpose-Driven Organizations Take action toward long-term sustainability for all with these resources Want to learn more about the Wellbeing Economy, strengthen your purpose-driven organization, and take active steps toward building collective wellbeing? Check out these resources from changemakers featured in this edition of Make The World Better Magazine.

MORE WELLBEING ECONOMY RESOURCES Want even more resources? Sparx has compiled a list of 30+ resources that will help you deepen your knowledge and take action toward long-term sustainability for all. Visit our blog for the complete list.

→ sparxpg.com/blog/30-wellbeing-economy-resources-for-purpose-driven-organizations

DR. VICTORIA HURTH - UNLEASHING THE SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS Co-authored by Dr. Victoria Hurth, these papers explore organizational culture, purpose-driven governance, purpose-driven approaches to business, how purpose transforms organizations, and how all of these factors contribute toward long-term sustainability for all.

→ cisl.cam.ac.uk/resources/unleashing-sustainable-business

THE PURPOSE BUSINESS - MEASURING YOUR IMPACT WITH THE SDGS Pat Dwyer, Founder and Director of The Purpose Business, made a guest appearance on the #impact Podcast to discuss how organizations can measure their impact. Along with sharing the recording, The Purpose Business has provided a summary of key takeaways from the episode.

→ thepurposebusiness.com/insights/impactpodcast-sdgs

SCOTTISH GOVERNMENT - WELLBEING ECONOMY TOOLKIT: SUPPORTING PLACE BASED ECONOMIC STRATEGY AND POLICY DEVELOPMENT The Scottish Government has provided a toolkit to help organizations better understand the Wellbeing Economy, learn how to develop their Wellbeing Economy story, monitor and evaluate wellbeing outcomes, and more. The toolkit includes action steps and case studies for each phase, along with a list of evidence resources.

→ gov.scot/publications/wellbeing-economy-toolkit-supporting-place-based-economic-strategy-policy-development

CANADIAN PURPOSE ECONOMY PROJECT - A CALL TO PURPOSE Take action toward wellbeing with Canadian Purpose Economy Project’s invitation to become a social purpose leader in Canada and sign the pledge.

→purposeeconomy.ca/a-call-to-purpose

PROF. LORENZO FIORAMONTI - WELLBEING ECONOMY: SUCCESS IN A WORLD WITHOUT GROWTH Professor Lorenzo Fioramonti shares invaluable insights in his book, including real-life examples and innovative research that support the need to break free from our current economic models and place collective wellbeing at the centre.

→lorenzoﬁ oramonti.org/books

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