How to degrow your business

Degrowth will transition our economy to deliver greater wellbeing on a smaller footprint. It’s not about creating less value by doing less – it’s about creating more value by doing things differently.

Here’s a rundown of how to build business value by doing things the degrowth way.

PURPOSE

Have a primary purpose that is truly needed by society or the environment. Kohutapu Lodge, for instance, is on a mission to revive the prosperity of its local community. Delve into supply chain options, too, and seek out like-minded businesses to reduce negative impacts coming into your business and gain resilience from being in a degrowth-oriented value chain. Business governance should incorporate perspectives that protect purpose, such as giving nature a voice on the board, introducing mission guardians, as Tony’s Chocolonely has done, or even placing the business in a purpose trust, like Patagonia has done.

SUFFICIENCY

Sufficiency is the single most important degrowth attitude for driving down overall resource and energy use.

We are all very used to setting business targets to improve eco-efficiency, reducing inputs per unit of production. That sounds sustainable but, unfortunately, efficient businesses tend to produce more, rather than use less, driving economic growth.

To be degrowth-aligned, combine your business’s efficiency efforts with sufficiency – producing and using only what is needed.

This can mean intentionally supplying less by producing goods and services that are durable and repairable. Cactus Outdoor produces clothing designed to last and offers a repair service. Shift in Germany responsibly produces smartphones and laptops that the user can repair.

Shareable goods and services also enable sufficiency, such as Cityhop cars and vans subscription service. Sufficiency could mean bringing consumers further up the value chain to be more like ‘prosumers’ sotheycanbeclearerwithyouabouttheir needs and you can be clearer with them about your business risks, bridging the gap between supply and demand.

This applies to re-usable packaging and unpackaged goods. Bin Inn customers can refill using their own containers. It also applies to community supported agriculture and community energy production.

Sufficiency can also mean sharing business assets, entering into co-owning, leasing or ‘as-a-service’ arrangements.

Tap into business networks to express your needs and find ways to make better use of local assets.

Another sufficiency approach is to reduce the team’s working hours. Gaining a better work-life balance is a real benefit from degrowth.

ADVOCACY

Degrowth is a big change from the existing growth economy and there are many structural and social barriers to overcome to create a fair playing field for pioneering businesses.

A few things that would really help with that are, firstly, being locally embedded and knowing ‘how things work around here’; secondly, ‘talking the walk’ so to speak, not being shy about explaining what you’re doing in degrowth and why; and thirdly, enabling people’s autonomy and building their capacity to bring about change, whether it’s your team, your customers or your business network.

Finally, don’t be surprised if getting into degrowth inspires you to change your business model.

Doughnut Economics offers a really great tool for redesigning businesses to be more regenerative and distributive.

“To be degrowth-aligned, combine your business’s efficiency efforts with sufficiency – producing and using only what is needed.”

Jennifer Wilkins Heliocene