Post-growth data entrepreneurship

A new wave of economists is talking about the unsustainability of growth for our planet and society. Our “addiction” to growth is causing climate change, human rights violations, threats to biodiversity, and unprecedented waste. The concerns these economists hold about uncontrolled growth are strengthened by developments in the Information Age. Data powers growth, but instead of increasing quality of life and paving the way for fairer and more efficient societies, the Data Economy seems to put extra pressure on our already fragile surroundings. Driven by data, our economy manifests uncertainty of the law, loss of control by governments as well as serious issues of consumer protection and fundamental rights.

How the reverse this trend? Well, an alternative “post-growth economy” is on the rise, which is built through "post-growth entrepreneurship". To explain “post-growth entrepreneurship” Melanie Rieback will discuss Nonprofit Ventures (NPV), a new business incubator intended to encourage social enterprises from all sectors to take up this ideal, revolutionary, socially-responsible, non-profit business model that optimises for benefit to the world (customers, employees, society) rather than financial interests (shareholders, investors, founders).

About the speaker:
Dr. Melanie Rieback is the CEO/Co-founder of Radically Open Security, the world’s first non-profit computer security consultancy company. She is also a former Assistant Professor of Computer Science at VU who performed RFID security research (RFID Virus and RFID Guardian), that attracted worldwide press coverage, and won several awards (VU Mediakomeet, ISOC Award, NWO I/O award, IEEE Percom Best Paper, USENIX Lisa Best Paper). Melanie worked as a Senior Engineering Manager on XenClient at Citrix, where she led their Vancouver office.