The Shared Ingredients for a Wellbeing Economy A DISCUSSION PAPER

As calls grow for a ‘New Economy’, ‘Wellbeing Economy’, ‘Circular/ Inclusive/ Regenerative Economy’ – call it what you will – frameworks, metrics, policy and support to make it happen are sprouting at every level, from local to global.

Yet with diversity, comes complexity.

If you are an already overstretched civil servant or council officer, struggling to deliver within the current inequitable and unsustainable system – how do you ‘choose’ between models, between tools, between data sources or between well meaning NGOs and consultancies offering their support on your journey? Or do you need to ‘choose’ at all?

This discussion paper is designed to help answer that question. How do these emerging models differ? Is it

an ‘either/or’ between them? Or are they, in essence, pointing to entirely the same future, with some subtleties of language or emphasis that add colour to the journey but ultimately guide us to a shared destination? Is there already sufficient agreement on what drives a better economy and how to deliver it, that now is the time to make it easier for places and their leaders to choose this new direction?

This paper is a summary of that exploration, outlining the key similarities and differences between some of the leading ‘wellbeing economy’ models. Most of these models provide a ‘framework’– to act as a ‘roadmap’ and a means to understand how the different drivers of progress sit together. Within these frameworks sits a range of outcomes areas often grouped into domains or goals. Some models provide detailed indicators, data and targets against which to measure progress and many give guidance on policy and engagement methods to embed the new way of working.

This paper will try to unpick some of this at a headline level – to explore whether beneath these diverse ways of visualising and understanding a wellbeing economy, there sits a growing agreement on what really drives our ability to thrive now and into the future.