What is prosperity?

This working paper is about why we need new theories both about what prosperity means and entails in the 21st century. To redefine prosperity is to challenge both the structural features of our economies and the value premises on which they are built. We are concerned here with how a redesigned prosperity opens the door not just to innovative ideas, but to new practices, allowing us to address inequalities in novel ways. Searching for the means and mechanisms through which these new frameworks and activities may be operationalised quickly reveals that we need fresh approaches to how systems change and knowledge is shared. We begin then with three points of reference: the value of the economic in our lives, the purpose of sharing knowledge, and the means of operationalising change.