Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist

by Kate Raworth

Economic evolution: one experiment at a time Yuan’s frustration with the privileged position still given to old economic theory is palpable. ‘Many university departments – such as sociology or political science – teach their students to think in different ways about the economy,’ she told me, ‘but only people who study neoclassical economic theory in economics departments go out into the world labelled as “economists”, with all the power that the label grants them. We have to break down the power of the expert which is concentrated in that title and make it mean lots of different things.’5 One promising way of redefining the meaning of ‘economist’ is to look to those who have gone beyond new economic thinking to new economic doing: the innovators who are evolving the economy one experiment at a time. Their impact is already reflected in the take-off of new business models, in the proven dynamism of the collaborative commons, in the vast potential of digital currencies, and in the inspiring possibilities of regenerative design.