The term business can come with many connotations: capitalism, extraction, traditional management and market based thinking. Greaterthan Collective was founded on the idea that we need to question the foundations that current ‘businesses-as-usual’ is built upon. We’re more like a business unusual , but we still choose to call ourselves a business. Why?

We believe that the radical change that we want to contribute to must go hand in hand with healing the wounds those same systems created - if not only to avoid replicating them again, and again. Rather than rejecting the word business, we chose to work with it. To face and embrace the frictions, connotations and tensions it brings, to allow ourselves to heal as we walk forward together. 

So let us define what it means for Greaterthan to be a business. 

We are purpose-driven. 

There is an evolutionary purpose that defines what Greaterthan exists to do in the world, and that is the core of what brings our members together. 

We fulfil this purpose through the services we offer, the projects we initiate, and our own collective experimentation and practice. 

Services and projects are the main source of our income. This income is used to nurture and sustain the Greaterthan commons, to meet the livelihood needs of our members, and to invest in initiatives that help us ambitiously work towards our purpose.

Profit is a means to fulfilling our purpose. 

Business-as-usual: profit is the primary purpose of business.

We are a post-growth business.

Greaterthan is stewardship-owned and does not exist to be exited, but to be a source of continuous value creation for all its stakeholders. These stakeholders are our members, the broader communities and ecosystems we are part of, and the earth.  

Business-as-usual: profit maximisation or exit as ultimate goals; shareholders interests are prioritised over nature, employee and long term organisational needs.

We are a collective. 

We are collectively governed by those actively engaged in Greaterthan.

We are committed to holding and evolving Greaterthan’s purpose together and to intentionally stepping into interdependent relationships with each other. This means members choose to join and stay freely (rather than having employer-employee relationships). We practise shared leadership, adult-to-adult relating and self-organising. 

To support our interdependence, we choose care, solidarity and mutualism as central principles in how we organise. 

Business-as-usual: command and control, everyone for themselves, power over relationships, decisions taken by managers, parent-child

We are beyond-rational. 

We welcome all parts to guide our decisions: mind, body and soul. For us, good business decisions aim to integrate logical reasoning, intuition, feelings, wisdom from our bodies, non-human perspectives, other ways of knowing, and actively unlearning. 

Business-as-usual: rational thinking, numbers driven, linear.

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We are Greaterthan… 

…and on the continuous journey of becoming

greater than the sum of our parts :) 

Want to explore further?

Check out the Greaterthan handbook, and watch the below video with Greaterthan Associate Ashish (India) and founding partner Francesca Pick talking about Greaterthan's history, what it means to us to be a Business Unusual, and lessons learned from co-stewarding Greaterthan since 2017.

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Header photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Meet Greaterthan

Interested in working with us? 

We'd be happy to have an exploratory call with you about your needs and the different ways that Greaterthan could support your organization.