what would work held to a timelessly, agelessly high standard in your market, industry, or category look like? If your enterprise were to survive not merely for another year, but a century, what would still be distinctive and compelling about its where, when, what, and how? Second, which kind of imperatives would it take to make it happen, not as a

Today, business is held fast in this paradox: the more “business” we do and the more we think solely in terms of “business,” the more we structure human exchange according to the precepts of yesterday’s paradigm; the less wealth we create, and often, the more wealth we destroy.

“We will make you better. Here is how we intend to enhance your human potential through the act of exchange: here is what you will excel at.”

Though business as usual profits, driving the growth of output, little prosperity results: profit is moved around from one to the other, but little wealth is actually accumulated, accrued, or created, and at the limit, wealth is actually destroyed.

An intention is fundamentally different. It says: “We will make you better. Here is how we intend to enhance your human potential through the act of exchange: here is what you will excel at.”

A positive economic paradigm doesn’t merely conceive of “health” as maximizing profit by minimizing waste but as redefining the outer limits of human achievement.

The terra incognita we’ve never explored is whether it’s possible for prosperity and human exchange not merely to go less wrong, but more right.

Today’s economy rewards people most for merely allocating existing capital. That’s not a recipe for prosperity; it’s simply a game of musical chairs.

So what went wrong with this gleaming, streamlined machine? As the old axiom goes, what gets measured gets managed. And as it turns out, we’ve been measuring the wrong things.