1 min readMar 13, 2018
Great question. I really don’t know the answer, but my assumptions are:
- The cooperative sector is generally quite conservative, dominated by old institutions that are used to being out of touch with other parts of the business world, which is a blessing (e.g. commitment to pro-social values) and a curse (e.g. slow to innovate). So if the question is “why are we not seeing a tonne of management innovation in coops?”, my answer is, “because we are not seeing a tonne of any innovation in coops”. Also in my experience as a teal coop founder, we have less access to capital because we’re a coop, which also translates into less innovation.
- In the reverse direction, asking why teal orgs are not cooperatively owned, I blame Laloux. I’m delighted he wrote the book and gave a name to the emerging movement, creating a rally point and seriously accelerated progress. However in my view, the book flagrantly ignores the ownership question, which is a mega mega oversight. So people look to the book for leadership, but are barely even asked to think about ownership as a relevant concern. To me it is the primary concern, so I have a hard time understanding why it got such fleeting treatment in the text.