Making haste slowly.

It seems that, over the last couple of decades, we have somehow conflated scale and speed. We are obsessed with unicorn businesses, exponential growth, and serial entrepreneurship, where we seek growth for growth's sake rather than building something worth building.

As with almost everything, the natural world of which we are but a small part (eighty per cent of the world's biomass is vegetation. Humans are a rounding error) points the way. Forests will not be rushed. Forest fires clear away deadwood and enrich the soil for the growth to follow, but we don't get instant fully grown trees. We can apply artificial fertilisers to the soil for a while, but the soil will still become exhausted and will take years of being left alone to recover. We can exploit natural resources from forests to oceans for a while, but as we now understand, nature bats last.

I'm part of a global discussion group. I have watched on, fascinated as this group of highly bright and committed people have gone from a …