Sufficiency strategies for a sustainable and competitive economy reversed and inversed incentives

In the past, business strategies have focused on increasing the efficiency, and later the resource efficiency, of production processes. This has led to a higher competitiveness of industry, and a reduction of the kilograms of resources necessary to produce a kilogram of product. However, these strategies have failed to stop the increases of overall resource consumption, measured in kilograms of resource consumption per capita per annum on a national level, and of overall waste volumes. This paper claims that new corporate strategies focused on sufficiency are needed if we want to achieve a sustainable and competitive economy. In the public sector, new science and technology policies are needed, as well as new public procurement policies. In academia, an awareness of the `lake economy´ - based on the management of existing assets, both natural and man-made - will have to be developed to replace the present theory of a `river economy´ based on free goods (of nature) and the flow optimisation of the manufacturing process