Manifesto for regenerative entrepreneurship: the salt of the Earth

What do you do when you realize the rules of the game have changed, but nobody told the players?

We are at exactly this breaking point. The contemporary economy lays bare structural paradoxes that can no longer be swept under the rug. We measure success based on GDP growth, as if that were enough—ignoring environmental collapse and the multiple dimensions of collective well-being.

We generate extraordinary wealth, but also extreme inequality. We develop technologies that connect the entire world, but fragment communities and accelerate a pace of life that leaves little room for reflection or purpose.

Thomas Piketty demonstrated that when the return on capital exceeds economic growth (r > g), "capitalism automatically generates arbitrary and unsustainable inequalities." This is not an anomaly; it's the mechanism operating as designed: inherited wealth grows faster than the wealth generated by labor. David Graeber, in turn, revealed in *Bullshit Jobs* how millions of people experience the anguish of purposeless jobs that generate no real value for society. The result: mass psychological suffering disguised as productivity.

It's not just a moral issue. It's mathematical. It's psychological. And the reckoning for this historical contradiction is coming due.

What economists call "externalities"—that technical term for human and environmental tragedies that the market doesn't price in—have ceased to be mere system noise. They have become existential threats. As sociologist Ulrich Beck states in *Risk Society*, environmental risks are no longer side effects of industrialization; they are its main product. And most alarmingly, they arise without a direct cause or visible culprit, making their mitigation even more complex.

It's no longer a matter of reforming the old system: it's time to rewrite the rules of the game.

It is in this spirit that I inaugurate this new face of my "old" column on the Brasil 247 Portal with a provocation: what if entrepreneurship, instead of being part of the problem, were part of the solution?

A capitalism redefined with soul, limits, and direction. An entrepreneurship that repairs the past and projects the future, that produces with care, that scales without devastating, that grows without disconnecting. A new way of existing economically, God willing, more attentive to the impact we generate, the relationships we cultivate, the bonds that sustain life on Earth.

This way of doing business does not reject globalization, but rather reinterprets it consciously, within a logic of... glocalizationA new way of thinking and acting that connects the global with the local, without fragmentation or homogenization. Connected, yes, but with roots. Digital, yes, but without dehumanization.

An economy capable of operating on a planetary scale without losing focus on what is concrete, vital, and situated. A territory that is not only geographical, but also affective, symbolic, and ethical.

And that uses technology not to replace life, but to re-enchant connections, rebuild belonging, and regenerate purpose.

It's not about denying the market, it's about redesigning it for the challenges of the 21st century. Expanding its metrics. Including what doesn't yet appear in the balance sheets: the health of ecosystems, the well-being of people. It is capitalism, yes, but regenerative. It is profit, yes, but distributed. It is innovation, yes, but rooted in the culture.

In the next few days, I will be at BRICS Business ForumIn Rio de Janeiro, what interests me most about this group—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—is not just their economic weight, but their plurality of paths. These are countries with profound contradictions and their own successes. Together, they offer the rare possibility of thinking about development in a more collaborative, contextualized way, rooted in the realities of the Global South.

And that makes me wonder: what kind of entrepreneurship do we want to foster?

Are there models that work in territories like ours, with historical inequalities, abundant but poorly distributed resources, and creative populations that have rarely had the necessary incentive to innovate as a means of survival?

The entrepreneurial spirit we need - Let's get straight to the point: entrepreneurship today can't be about creating the next unicorn. It has to be about solving real problems, with the right people, at the right scale, in the right territories.

And this requires:

• Think in terms of networks, not empires. The obsession with infinite growth has created monsters that drain everything around them. We need businesses that grow by strengthening the social fabric—not tearing it apart.
• Integrate, don't isolate. The entrepreneur-hero is a solitary myth. The best projects are born from collaboration between traditional knowledge and innovation, between university and community, between profit and purpose.
• Taking care of the territory. No business happens in a vacuum. Every venture takes place somewhere, with someone, using resources from some ecosystem. To regenerate is to give back more than you take.

Technology plays a central role, but not as the main player; rather, it is a powerful and indispensable tool.

Kate Raworth, with her Doughnut Economics, offers us a powerful compass: it is necessary to meet everyone's needs within the planet's limits. This means guaranteeing minimum social rights such as health, education, and housing, without exceeding the ecological limits that sustain life.

Mariana Mazzucato, in turn, showed how the State can, and should, act as an engine of transformative innovation. Technologies that we now consider revolutionary, such as the internet, GPS, batteries, and medicines, were born from bold public investments.

Regular is not enough. We need to design new markets with courage and purpose, guiding progress not by immediate profit, but by the common good.

These are ideas that have already inspired public policies and innovative practices in various parts of the world, from Amsterdam to the BNDES (Brazilian Development Bank). But they still operate on the margins of the system. It's time to bring them to the center of economic practice.

The Brazilian opportunity - Brazil has real potential to lead the transition to a new economy. We possess one of the greatest biodiversities on the planet, creative young people of all ages, powerful traditional knowledge, and a living history of collective resistance. A culture of collectivity vibrates on the margins: in the collective efforts of family farming, in seamstress cooperatives, in community banks like Palmas, in the support networks that emerged in the favelas during the pandemic. It also manifests itself in the Quilombola, Indigenous, and Afro-Brazilian traditions, where the common good is part of the worldview.

We've made progress in financial inclusion. Brazil has brought millions of people into the banking system through PIX, the digital social accounts of the Auxílio Brasil program, and the MEI (Individual Microentrepreneur) program. Popular fintechs have expanded access. And microcredit initiatives and social currencies show promising paths forward.

But what is lacking, more than capital, is a change in mentality. What is lacking is education for the kind of entrepreneurship that this century demands: an entrepreneurship that is conscious of the territory, committed to communal life, and that understands the political and social impact of each productive choice.

This entrepreneurial spirit can be social, regenerative—and also digital. It can generate profit, scale, use cutting-edge technology—as long as it doesn't lose its roots and collective responsibility. Entrepreneurship in Brazil can't continue to be just about opening a business or "scaling quickly." It has to be about solving what really matters—ethically, with connection, and with purpose.

Where to Start - There's no need to wait for the revolution. It has already begun. It began in collectives that use technology to organize favelas. In cooperatives that connect small producers to conscious consumers. In startups that confront the bottlenecks of the SUS (Brazilian public healthcare system). In movements that occupy abandoned buildings to create spaces for social innovation.

The future of work will not be defined solely by algorithms, automation, or technical degrees, but by the political choices we make every day about how we want to live. Work is more than just producing: it's about inhabiting the world, redistributing time, recognizing interdependencies, and generating meaning. And politics, in this context, is not limited to the State or Congress—it throbs within the invisible structures that organize our markets, our technologies, and our subjectivities.

Deciding how we work, what we value, and whom our innovations serve is a profoundly political act and, in the 21st century, also a gesture of collective survival.

As Beto Guedes sings:

"We'll need everyone. One plus one is always more than two. To better combine our forces, we just need to share the bread better, recreate paradise now, to deserve those who come after."

This is the spirit we need to recover. Not to return to the past, but to redesign the future, where work, land, and technology converse in harmony.

The new economy will not emerge from the boardrooms of large corporations.

It will emerge from the margins — where the revolutions that truly matter have always been born.