Wtf is post-growth?

Part 3/3 an invitation to think big about the future you're building

In the final post in this series mini series exploring alternative growth concepts in a low-brow high-curiosity way — wtf is regenerative growth?, wtf is degrowth — we’re talking about the most expansive idea yet: post-growth.

If regenerative growth focuses on repairing systems, and degrowth on reducing ecological impact and deprioritising GDP, post-growth is the most broad and abstract of the three ideas.

What is post-growth?

Post-growth is an umbrella term for all possible alternatives to the current capitalist system. Tim Jackson, ecological economist and author of Post Growth: Life After Capitalism describes:

“Post-growth is not the end of prosperity it’s the beginning of a different kind. One that recognises our ecological limits, redefines what we value, and reimagines what it means to flourish.”

We’re experiencing and witnessing the result of striving for endless financial growth:

Financial growth has become the primary indicator of success for countries, businesses, and people. But it doesn’t account for health, happiness, or ecological stability. We’ve conflated individual financial wealth with prosperity as a species and as a result we’re experiencing rising emissions, extreme inequality, and ecosystem collapse. Yet still we strive for more? Make it make sense.

The post-growth lens invites us to decentre financial growth as the indicator of success and recentre life. How do we want to live? What do we care about? What responsibilities do people living in more prosperous regions have to support those who have had the rawest end of the capitalist deal?

Orgs like the Post Growth Institute are bringing hope + ideas to the table:

“A full circle, post-growth economy is already emerging, offering a pathway to collective thriving within ecological limits— an alternative to the current extractive, growth-dependent economy that leads to despair and division. The movement is driven by people who believe in an economy that naturally circulates money rather than concentrating it, an economy that values people’s needs ahead of corporate greed, an economy that gives more than it takes from our life-supporting planet.”

Ideas that feature prominently in post-growth conversations include:

• Universal basic services: ensuring everyone has access to housing, transport, healthcare, and education, regardless of market income.

• Shorter working weeks: redistributing time and labour to reduce burnout and emissions.

• Doughnut Economics: a model (proposed by Kate Raworth) that balances human needs with planetary boundaries.

• Steady-state economies: economies that maintain a stable level of production and consumption instead of constantly expanding.

It also looks like co-ops, community wealth building, care work being valued, degrowth-aligned businesses, and policies that prioritise thriving over scaling.

You don’t need to be a policymaker to think post-growth. I see it as an invitation to think as big as you can about how you can build a life that fits into the future you’d like to see. This should be an exercise in joy and audacity. Here are three prompts to kick off with:

1. What would a successful year look like without mentioning revenue?

2. What systems, tools, or habits in your business currently reflect a growth-at-all-costs mindset? Could/should they be changed?

3. How might your business contribute to collective wellbeing not just individual success?

Building towards a post-growth future seems so obviously the direction we need to take yet sometimes it still feels blasphemous to suggest that a business should be striving to do more than increase profits.

Maybe brands and businesses aren’t the vehicles that will carry us into a post-growth future. Maybe they can’t shape shift that far. But, for now, given that they are the vehicles for making $ on planet earth, it’s worth the conversations on how we can expand their purpose for real beyond a slide in a brand strategy deck.

As always would love to hear your thoughts on this!

Chat soon,

Matilda

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Written by strategist Matilda Lucy. Based in London, working with brands who want to grow on their own terms. Say hi!