Comparing Evolutionary Business With Other Progressive Business Concepts
How Evolutionary Business relates to other progressive business practices and philosophies.
Evolutionary business can be described as conscious leadership meets B Corps, expanding on those movements to include all types of businesses, pragmatically and openly supporting scale for impact by offering self-directed means of providing maximal service to all stakeholders and support for developing people and teams.
It leverages Integral Theory to address all dimensions and all levels. “I-We-It” is a simple, helpful frame for building and maintaining an evolutionary business as well as the global capitalist system.
It is deeper, broader, and more open and inclusive than B Corps, recognizing not only improvements in systems and structures, but also the importance of the development of a company’s individuals, teams, and culture. It also presents a vision for businesses to be of maximal service to all of their stakeholders (not just to “consider” them) while eliminating the need to join a program or receive certification.
Beyond Kofman’s Conscious Business, it aligns systems and structures with conscious--as well as conscientious--leadership, not just supporting people and teams to operate more effectively but to be impactful leaders of companies that are forces for good in the world.
It updates Triple Bottom Line by addressing the harm caused by profit-maximization and clarifies that a better goal is for businesses to be self-sustaining and of maximal service to all stakeholders, including specific groups of people, organizations, and the planet.
It goes deeper than all other business models, including Conscious Capitalism, by revealing the importance of self-awareness of the Jungian concept of shadow in leaders, organizations, and capitalism itself. This supports leaders and businesses to be ethical and accountable, in integrity with their purpose and values.
It offers practical suggestions for rebuilding systems and structures to end the oppression of Black, indigenous, and other people of color, as well as women; to heal the planet, in support of the sustainability movement; and to provide workers with greater fulfillment, better pay, and more complete care, beyond the promise of unions or national governments.
Unlike nonprofit charities and NGOs, it is built on the belief that business is the most efficient and effective way to improve our society. That business and capitalism are not inherently bad or evil, but that the quest for maximization of shareholder value and profits causes great harm.
Unlike the “teal” representation of Spiral Dynamics’ Second Tier in Laloux’s Reinventing Organizations, it goes beyond new approaches to management, especially programmatic models like Holacracy, and suggests flexibility and pragmatism.
It holds the view that evolution transcends and includes all elements of the present and past, including in how businesses operate so that they need not choose to be either competitive or collaborative, for example, but instead can include both, transcending today’s best practices with new ways of working.
It can be thought of as a dynamic continuum, in which a business can be evolutionary in some ways more so than others, and can deteriorate or improve with behaviors, decisions, and actions over time.
