The 10 Principles of Next Economy Enterprises serve as critical guideposts for designing organizations from a socially just and environmentally regenerative perspective. They are emergent and malleable, derived from work with hundreds of social enterprises. Here is an outline of the 10 principles:
10 Principles of Next Economy Enterprises
1. Meet Basic Needs This principle prioritizes providing human-centered essentials like nourishing food, clean water, shelter, and medicine. It directly challenges the Business as Usual (BAU) economy, which is geared toward fulfilling greed rather than human need, by providing essentials without destroying habitat and ecosystems. Enterprises adhering to this principle also look for ways to consider ecosystem repair as an impact outcome of their business functions.
2. Share Ownership Sharing ownership ensures that traditionally underrepresented groups—including people of color, women, and immigrants—benefit from the ownership of their labor and ideas. This principle encourages organizations to confront existing systems of wealth concentration and build cross-racial, multi-gendered, and multicultural models of ownership. This often manifests in structures like worker-owned cooperatives, Employee Ownership Trusts (EOTs), or Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs)
3. Democratize Governance This involves creating an explicitly non-hierarchical, democratic, and inclusive culture within the organization. By engaging and trusting staff as "sensors and actors in the system" and involving them directly in decision-making, organizations can achieve greater stability and longevity. When democracy is practiced consistently in the workplace, individuals are empowered, which leads to greater support for implementation of decisions.
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