The 5 Ps

For most of the last century we measured progress with a single yardstick: profit and growth (and power). The industrial revolution, and then, the information revolution (the Internet) both fed off (and into) this simple economic logic.

The 1P world made some of us rich and it made the markets more efficient, but it’s utterly unfit for the future as we head into the Intelligence Revolution fuelled by AI (and other hyper-exponential game-changers such as robotics, fusion energy and quantum computing). If we continue to pursue the sole objective of Profit & Power, we will implode before we reach 2050 – a world of abundance cannot coexist with the outdated economic mantras of the pre-AI world.

This (and the climate change debate) is why I keep coming back to the 5Ps that I introduced over a decade ago: People, Planet, Purpose, Peace and Prosperity.

Not as just another meme, but as a better economic operating system for the decisions we make about science, technology, business, policies and the future. Get the first four right, and prosperity stops being the thing we chase – it becomes the thing we earn.

People, because no economy is worth more than the lives inside it. Planet, because there is no good future on a broken one (even if we do go to other planets). Purpose, because efficiency without meaning and telos (direction) is just a faster way to nowhere. Peace, because everything we want to build assumes we don’t tear it down first, and that we can indeed collaborate. And prosperity – real prosperity, shared and lasting – as the result, not the goal.

The future is not written; it’s a choice. The 5Ps are how I propose to design it.