Future of Business

Abstract

This concluding chapter stresses that the future of business highly depends on its ability to renew its business models. The key problem is the nature, form, and scale of business operations. The business models of today’s mainstream business do not fit in the reality of the biosphere. Business models vary but almost none of them are consistent with the flourishing life on Earth (including human, nonhuman, and future life). To achieve meaningful change in the humanity-nature nexus business organizations should reinvent the ways they function. How can business become ecologically conscious agent which operates within limits, that is, uses only its “fair earth share” and contributes to the richness of life on Earth? Our progressive business cases and other examples of innovative business models are just the first steps in the difficult trajectory of transforming business to fit in the reality of the Anthropocene. The much disturbed Earth-Human system requires organizations whose primary objectives and criteria of success include the “Commonwealth of Life.”If mainstream business will not change its underlying “market fundamentalism,” there will be little chance for humanity to survive in the Anthropocene. The hope is that progressive business models can make the old-fashioned ways of doing business obsolete.