Following a previous post, more on the concept of 'eco systems economics'. In short: not how can we valuate ecosystems services, but how can we design the economy to work more like eco-systems? If these have existed for a few billion years, something must be right there. So, what ingredients would need to be present to mimic this success?
* Interdependence: different parts of society depend on each other. Businesses can try to just generate short term profits, but if they ignore the feedback they receive from other parts of society, they will go down. Instead of only focusing on their own (financial) value, for their own survival, they are interdependent on their other stakeholders to function as well. They need to cooperate to create shared value. Otherwise their success will be short-lived.
* Self-organisation: we need structure up to a certain degree. But too much structure deteriorates the ability of the system to react, to be creative, to flow and find the appropriate equilibriums. If structure is added in places where the system needs flexibility, the system and its part suffers. Such over-structuring could come from many sources: rigid regulations that focus on means and not on goals, pricing mechanisms that prevent energy (ideas, transactions, creativity) to flow and mechanisms that favour extraction-based processes that ignore that they need to give back to live.
* Diversity: it's simple. Monocultures do not survive. They are vulnerable, anything that enters them will kill them. They share the same successes, but also the same failures. A diverse system, that develops and cherishes various complementary skills and assets stands the best chance of survival and further development. Society provides us with feedback about which (combination of) approaches gain momentum at a certain point in time. This can result on some approaches to die off), but show me the monopoly that has worked for more than a few years. This post has in part been inspired by sources as diverse as TNS (The Natural Step) and HBR (Harvard Business Review). Case in point…
* Development instead of growth: unchecked (financial) profit oriented growth may with some sense of drama, be compared with cancer cells: they only focus on their own growth, in volume, in size, and in the process only benefiting some brothers in arms that try to clean up the mess. But in that process too, the body it feeds on dies; and thereby the cancer cells themselves with it. Society as the human body. A counterexample? Inoculations. Inject a little of the bad, for the system to adapt and be able to fight when a lot of the bad arrives. Work together to improve the overall resilience.

The economy of the future is system that encourages the wonderful interplay between these qualities.