Introduction

Despite long-standing warnings about the likely emergence in the near future of a novel coronavirus to which humans had no immunity, the pandemic caused by COVID-19 caught most countries unprepared. As of 18 April 2021, the world had recorded three million deaths due to COVID-19. The series of lockdowns adopted by most countries in an attempt to slow down the spread of the virus resulted in about 255 million full-time job losses in 2020 (ILO, 2021) many of which are likely to become permanent even after the pandemic is brought under control. Controlling COVID-19 has further challenged the fundamental human right of freedom of movement and ushered in a range of new methods of surveillance and control of public behaviour. It also underlined long-standing inequalities, with the burden of illness falling disproportionately on already disadvantaged groups, who tend to be more precariously employed (Warjri and Shah, 2020).

As worrisome as these trends are, it is also possible to imagine a future where COVID-19 leads us towards something more equitable, more humane and beneficially globalized (as well as better preparation for pandemics to follow). Although the future is deeply uncertain, and as of the time of writing the pandemic is far from over, we have also identified some positive trends which are worthy of discussion. We argue that the pandemic has shown us the possibilities which might be derived from shifting our focus from an economy based on always increasing monetary exchange of goods and services, as measured by gross domestic product (GDP), to an economy focused on increasing social resilience and wellbeing. Key to this is a shift away from our present obsession with market-based indicators and a movement towards a growth-agnostic approach to innovation. In previous work, we have called this ‘responsible stagnation’ (de Saille et al, 2020), a term which could also describe the global halt to economic activity which occurred in March 2020 as the only means of stopping the spread of COVID-19. In this chapter we highlight some trends towards growth-agnostic, social innovations that occurred during 2020, focusing on human flourishing rather than economic growth.