We introduce the Pyramid Paradigm, or 4 x Profit entrepreneurship, to replace the current, obsolete speculative and manipulative 1 x Profit, 3 x Loss algorithm and related governance.

The corona lockdown has shown us our vulnerability as a species due to lack of overall resilience. Blogs have already been filled for decades with everything that is unhealthy, destructive and abusive about our current political economic hierarchies and lifestyle, but writing about it will not change anything. Too many people and institutions attach individual value to this greedy, unsustainable societal format. In order to change a malfunctioning system we need to make it absolete by introducing something new, something that produces equal or more wealth yet without the destructiveness of the one we leave behind. A change that people and institutions can find their wellness in, probably even better than before.

What is entrepreneurship?

The originally french verb “entreprendre” means literally “to undertake action” or “to start something”. In our historically formalized traditional entrepreneurial world we limit our interpretation of the word to the “personal financial risks” taken by people in business start ups and development. In the 21st century we see that we need to adjust this interpretation.

The old “money making activities” of the old definition of entrepreneurship lack the intrinsic valueing of moral and ethical responsability for “the humanitarian and environmental whole”. When I ask the question “what are we willing to look away from to reach our financial objectives?” the unspoken answer is “everything”. Our financial benefits, growth and material resilience are most important. In reality the sum of all “looking away’s”, all the “sacrifices of our moral and ethical judgements” is causing the world wide problems of poverty, shortages, destruction, wars, abuse, etc.

Government is also entrepreneur. It helps the money making entrepreneurships through “money taking activities” which are used to create costly facilitating infrastructures and remedial care tasks (health care, social cushions). The government “taking” is depending on the economy of growth generated by the “looking away”, the sacrifice, even though at government level it is a more calculated excersize (trying to balans local stimulus and cost of consequences) than the opportunistic business development of global industries and trade organizations.

Together

The common denominator is “entrepreneurship” in all institutions. If we change the immoral “looking away” part into “taking responsability” when we take entrepreneurial action a new world opens up to all participants. However, developing responsability within the scope of the fragmented reality of each insititutional player is ineffective. It has been done already for decades in the old fragmentized economy of growth world, using terms as “sustainability”, “PPP” and “green economy”. And more recently “the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals)”, economizing the problems rather than our responsabilities. In the process we see all kinds of attrocities develop that are as destructive as the issue they try to solve.

The way forward is to defragmentize responsability by taking it together. We need then other parameters than financial statistics (economic growth or cost savings) to connect the diversity of entrepreneurial processes (creation, governance, culture and learning) with the term responsability. Each institution is not just responsable for its own financial wellbeing. It is also responsable for the consequences it generates in the process and, more positively, the measurable values it creates for the human being, society and interaction with our environment.

Within sustainocracy we defined five core responsabilities for natural human resilience:

• Health – proactive focus on integral wellness
• Safety – including respect for each other and our environment
• Awareness – as permanent learning process
• Cocreation – not look away but take action together for local and global resilience of wellness
• Basic daily needs – healthy food, water, energy and air

At fragmented level any type of entrepreneurship should always creatively and responsably contribute to these basic values, never cause any detriment. In order to do so we introduce the 4 x Profit, or Pyramid Paradigm, to not just guide our entrepreneurship in a measurable way, also to connect there where we can enhace our actions through multidisplinary cocreation (as we tend to say: 1 + 1 becoming much more than 2).

The word “Profit” is used in much broader sence than “financial profit”. It gives meaning to benefit, a measurable genuine value. The 4 x Profit shows subsequently as follows:

• Profit for the human being – in terms of the five core human values
• Profit for society – in terms of social interaction, positive engagement, cost savings, resilience, participation
• Profit for the environment – in terms of health, no pollution, symbiotic circular interaction, integral eco-dynamics
• Profit for financial continuity – in terms of reciprocity, recognition, reward..

The interaction between the different players in cocreation is visualized in the 4 x Profit pyramid in which we all meet to take our regional and global responsability together, develop positive energy and sustainable progress.

Connecting in the center of the Pyramid (the blue dot in the drawing) is referred to as level 4 society, a Sustainocracy. It connects through the definition of regional priorities. Various examples are already precedenting this way of working, initiated by the STIR Foundation in 2009:

AiREAS – air quality and health

FRE2SH – urban food and healthy food resilience

COS3i – social inclusion of citizens into sustainocratic cocreation

School of Talents and Wellness – participatory learning programs on the cross road of specialized knowledge