Key Takeaways of Grønn Vekst, Per Espen Stoknes’ New Book

In his recently released book, climate psychologist Per Espen Stoknes makes a case for bridging the gap between the mindsets of conventional business people and liberal environmental activists. Hive Initiative ambassador Benedicte Lysaker shares a recap and her insights from the book.

Grønn Vekst (titled Tomorrow’s Economy in English) is Per Espen Stoknes’ sixth book (fourth in English) and focuses on how we might create a sustainable future that includes economic health by adopting a new mindset that stops blaming consumers and capitalists and instead promotes including them in creating healthy growth for the upcoming century. He gives insight on green growth— what it is, why we need it and how we can achieve it.

As of the publish date of this article, the book is only available in Norwegian, with its English translation scheduled for release in 2021. Benedicte Lysaker, an ambassador of The Hive Initiative and a business designer at Making Waves in Oslo, Norway, has read the book and shares her reflections.

“I think the book is a fresh take on the climate action debate,” she shares. “Per Espen shines a light on our mental models of the past and explains the shift needed in organizations, management and governance in order to create healthy growth for the 21st century. Specifically, we need to to bridge the gap between the conventional finance/business mind and that of the liberal environmental activist. The book gives us some ideas for how we can do this from a financial and psychological perspective.”

Benedicte Lysaker

Her key takeaways

1. We must talk about growth in new ways and move away from a polarizing debate which views economic growth as dangerous.

Debates about economic growth often end up in division: You are either for growth–or you are against it. This locks our thinking into polarities: expansion or limitation, progress or setback, full speed or abrupt stop. In the debate, such polarization leaves little room for reflection of what kind of economic growth is worth fighting for.

2. Many people in top management have a financial background and might have a limited imagination when it comes to innovation and system changes.

Here there is a huge opportunity for the use of the designers’ toolbox to help organizations grow their imagination for new sustainable solutions. But to do that we need to include a business approach, not just a designer’s innovation approach.

3. We need to include financial growth when we are talking about sustainable system design and innovation.

Without financial growth, systems cannot grow. Today’s system stems from the industrial revolution, which when established did not regard realities such as climate change and the collapse of nature’s life-supporting systems. However the system is entrenched, so rejecting its current driving forces will delay its green evolution.

4. To establish a path for healthy growth we need to look at how businesses today are creating profit and value.

In the book, Stoknes introduces us to a framework for a broad healthy economy, with annual flows (income) at the top and long-term wealth as a broad set of capital holdings. Healthy growth in the 21st century is about increasing wealth, and savings are used to maximize three capital assets (productive capital — GDP, natural capital and social capital) to create a healthy economy. In other words, in order to achieve a broad capital holding we need to create a balanced positive rate of change in productive, natural and social capital.

5. The changes cannot come solely from the top-down.

We need to work actively to create bottom-up change to give governance the incentive to drive reshaping. We also need to have more multidisciplinary cooperation the the future to power transformation.

Final thoughts

As a business designer, Benedicte feels that this book has changed her perspective on how she can use her knowledge and competence in design and change management to narrow the divide between business and planet when working with her clients. She says, “by using some of the frameworks given in the Grønn Vekst, I can help my clients keep the planet in mind while at the same time solve their business problems.”

She endorses the book, “I highly recommend this book for everyone that is curious about how we can create healthy economic growth for the 21st century. By shifting our mental models, using the economy as a tool and looking for new tools in our everyday work, we can influence healthy growth that considers all three: people, planet and profit.”

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Benedicte Lysaker is the founder of Epoke, an innovation consultancy. She can be found at LinkedIn.

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This article was first published on the Hive Initiative Medium account.