Hello, I'm Mary Portas and this is The Kindness Economy, a podcast that looks at the new values driving the businesses of tomorrow. People, planet and profit in that order. It's the future. Are you ready for better?

With two older brothers and a sister who were always a step ahead of me, I couldn't wait to grow up when I was a child.

Each year my mother would line us up in the kitchen to measure us against the wall,

and over the years it became littered with those tiny little black marks showing each of us progressing

upwards in the world and every time I'd wait breathlessly to see how much I'd grown. But the

mistake I made of course is that back then, like so many of us, I thought growing up would be

it. I believe that I'd get to a point physically, emotionally and mentally. That was

fixed. I'd be grown. Now, of course, I realised how wrong I was. My body stopped growing,

but it continued to change over the years. Our men to childbirth and menopause. Emotionally and mentally too.

I mean, I've almost been in a constant process of evolution.

And so my lived experience is what makes this quote by the economist Manfred Max Neff chimes so powerfully.

Every living system in nature grows up to a certain point and stops growing. As a person,

it comes to a point when you stop growing, but you continue to develop yourself. Development has no

limits. Businesses too are increasingly understanding the difference between growth and development.

For so long, we were taught that financial growth at any cost was a number one priority.

But people like economists Kate Ray, worth the questioning that.

And if you heard me talk with her a while ago, you'll know that she believes, as are many economists now, that unchecked

economic growth is as damaging to us collectively as unchecked growth is to our own individual

bodies. The growth economy is about material comfort, backward analysis and disruption that

creates maximum short-term results. It is unthinkable and it is insatiable.

But the kindness economy is about social and financial impact,

looking forwards, as well as backwards, disruption and re-imagination.

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