Business As A Vehicle For Degrowth

EPISODE 12

Melanie Rieback

“I think if we can consider entrepreneurship as a kind of hero’s journey, for the expression of who we are, then what we’re going to find that the overall mission is going to be our guiding light.”

photo credit: Tobias Groenland

Dr. Melanie Rieback, CEO and Co-founder of Radically Open Security, sees business as a form of self-expression, of creativity and activism. She also believes that social enterprises in their current form are not delivering and are stuck in an extractive capitalist dimension. Now she is on a mission to provide an alternative model, which she has dubbed post-growth entrepreneurship. She has already designed a university course (worth 6 ECTS points) for it, as well as setting up an incubator around the same thinking called Nonprofit Ventures. 

Melanie is a former Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the Free University of Amsterdam (VU) and has won a range of awards for her work. She has been named one of the fifty most inspiring women in tech in the Netherlands and one of nine most innovative women in the European Union.

https://radicallyopensecurity.com/

https://postgrowthentrepreneurship.com

UN Sustainable Development Goal: none

BOOKS

Bernard Lietaer - The Future of Money

Tim Jackson – Prosperity without Growth

Muhammad Yunus – Building Social Business

Kate Raworth – Donut Economics

Douglas Rushkoff – Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus

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