All Hands on Deck for the Solutions Economy

The Solutions Economy 

I’ve been letting myself down a bit lately.

It’s the kind of learning where you know the theory, you can explain it beautifully, you can even teach it to others, but you realise you haven’t been practicing it yourself. I’ve felt like a yoga instructor who spends her morning scrolling on her phone instead of on her mat, forgetting the integral oneness of breath, body, and mind.

For me, that practice is Dare Dreaming. If you’ve been reading The Hope Dispatch for a while, you’ll know it’s a way of thinking that stretches both the imagination and the plan. It’s a disruptive thought pattern that polishes, clarifies, and sharpens your vision, while helping design the blueprint for the life or future you are living into.

Dare Dreaming is about using small, potent thoughts as seeds – planting the oak tree that will one day give you shade. But lately, I got busy. I stopped using it as my daily compass, and the energy that once flowed so naturally began to tangle. The valley of darkness served its purpose though. It reminded me what it feels like to not use my tools, to drift from the practices that root and renew me.

So last week, I picked it back up. Within days, I could feel the fire catch again. Out of that renewed clarity came something that had been sitting quietly inside me for years – my Solutions Economy Manifesto.

These ideas have been rattling around for decades, waiting for the right moment to find form. In some strange way, I think I was waiting for someone else to say it first (a politician, a party, an economist?). But it dawned on me that maybe this story is ours to tell. The story of an economy that actually solves problems, involving everyone in creating the solutions. Capitalism is insufficient.  We need a new purpose.

Why We Need a Solutions Economy

Here in Aotearoa New Zealand, we’re famous for our ‘Number 8 Wire’ mentality – that resourceful, inventive streak that finds a way through with whatever tools are on hand. We are natural problem-solvers, yet we keep electing leaders who reward outdated forms of value—flogging off freeze-dried milk, animal carcasses, pinus radiata, and dead sea creatures on massive fossil-fuelled ships to overseas markets. 

Every one of those sectors is vulnerable to the same cascading forces of disruption – climate change, biodiversity collapse, rising energy costs, insurance withdrawal, and geopolitical instability. We keep stacking our eggs in the same basket and then wondering why the basket keeps breaking.

Our economy is lagging for obvious reasons. It is designed for a world that is fading. Unless we start investing in the one that is forming, we risk a spectacular crash.

A New National Identity

It’s time for my nation to usher in a new identity. One that celebrates innovation not as tech jargon but as care in motion. One that treats creativity as infrastructure, healing as growth and regeneration as the new productivity.

We need to rethink what a primary export looks like in a changing world. Our next wave of value will come from circular systems, reciprocity, local ingenuity, distributed ownership, and humane technology.

The primary exports of our small country at the bottom of the South Pacific should be virtually weightless –  exporting solutions; creativity, methodologies, practices, intellectual property, innovation, research, and cultural knowledge. These are the assets that regenerate themselves the more we share them and they require no fossil fuels to transport them.

That’s what the Solutions Economy is about:  an economy that multiplies value rather than extracts it, where every investment solves more than one problem at a time.

If you want to read more, here is a link to  download the Solutions Economy Manifesto 

And from my imperfect application of my own Dare Dreaming practices of late, I remind myself that it’s really not about being perfect. It’s about participating in the solution. I like the idea that this solution is going to take as many forms as there are diverse people in our nation. 

I also hope that this idea escapes our shores, that this identity is stolen and run with by other countries who want to be part of the transforming economy rather than the dying one.

Have a hope-fuelled week!

Xxx Megan 

P. S.: Do you have a dare dream sitting inside yourself that is itching to be given some form? I would love to hear it. I heard a lovely friend share her dream for a geothermal AI Data centre yesterday and it made me a bit giddy with excitement.

P.S  Who Am I To Write About the Economy? Yes. I’ve asked myself this more than once
: ) Who am I – essentially, a creative –  to write about the economy?

But maybe that’s exactly why I should.

Because ‘The Economy’ isn’t just numbers on a spreadsheet or levers of fiscal policy. It’s the collective story of how we create, exchange, and sustain value. It’s the architecture of our relationships – to each other, to the planet, and to possibility.

Creatives have always been systems thinkers in disguise. We connect dots across disciplines, we sense what’s emerging, and we give shape to ideas before they exist. We make the invisible visible. And right now, what’s missing from our economic conversation is imagination.

Economists can model what is, but artists, storytellers, and strategists can help us see what could be.

So maybe I’m not writing about the economy as an economist would. I’m writing as someone who believes that culture drives change faster than policy ever will. That imagination is an economic resource. And that the next economy – the Solutions Economy –  will be designed not only by analysts, but by those brave enough to dream differently. People who want to participate in creating solutions. <3