PURPOSE Economy: 'The gravitational field has become so strong that we've forgotten that other organizational forms are possible'

Steward-ownership advocacy nonprofit PURPOSE publishes its fireside chat writeup with Eric, anchoring on his framing of financial gravity as a structural — not moral — problem and pointing to Patagonia, Novo Nordisk, Ecosia, and Buurtzorg as proof other forms are possible.

“A few years ago, Eric Ries wrote "the Lean Startup" and taught a generation of founders how to build a business. Now he wrote "Incorruptible", asking the harder question: how do you protect what you've built? We had a fireside chat with Eric about his new book, and one picture keeps coming back to us. One that many founders will recognise. 👉 He calls it 'financial gravity' – the force that no one controls but everyone obeys. A quiet pull that draws companies away from their mission over time, not because of bad intentions, but because of how they're structured: "Psychological pressure that shapes behavior, and eventually values, based on the desire to succeed at future transactions. Our reflexes kick in automatically in the face of money, power, or status disparities, which, in our hyper-financialized world, have become interchangeable." The result, as Eric puts it, is its most insidious effect: "The gravitational field has become so strong that we've forgotten that other organizational forms are possible."” — PURPOSE® on LinkedIn