Definition

The Triple Bottom Line is a framework for assessing organisational success in three areas: economic, social, and ecological. In this Source Note, the third bottom line is reframed from Profit to Prosperity, emphasising not just short-term financial gains but the long-term health and well-being of the broader system.

Why It Matters

The Triple Bottom Line was originally developed to challenge the notion that business success should be measured solely by financial results. John Elkington introduced it as a means to encourage a revaluation of capitalism, moving beyond its role as merely a reporting framework. In 2018, he effectively “recalled” the term, contending that it had been too often reduced to simple accounting rather than used as a catalyst for systemic change. This is significant because many organisations adopted sustainability language without truly transforming their fundamental worldview. Consequently, People, Planet, and Profit became just metrics to report, balance, or manage.

Yet the deeper question remained unresolved: ‘What is business for, and what kind of future does it help create?’

In Green Swans, Elkington advanced the argument toward regenerative capitalism and broader system change (Elkington, 2020). This Source Note builds on that direction, but we make a specific move: reframing the third bottom line from Profit to Prosperity.

From Profit to Prosperity

Profit is necessary for organisational viability, but it is not sufficient as a measure of success in a complex, interdependent world. Prosperity asks a broader set of questions:

• Prosperity for whom?
• Over what time horizon?
• At what social and ecological cost?
• What systems make that prosperity possible?
• Does this action strengthen or weaken future adaptive capacity?

In this Source Note, we adopt and refine the language of People, Planet, and Prosperity. The phrase is already present in sustainable development discourse, particularly through the UN 2030 Agenda and related SDG language. However, its use here is more specific.

We reframe the third bottom line from Profit to Prosperity to emphasise that organisational success cannot be separated from the health and viability of the wider system of which the organisation is part. Profit remains necessary, but prosperity is broader. It includes the organisation, its people, suppliers, customers, communities, ecological dependencies, and the future conditions that enable value creation to continue.

This is therefore not a rejection of profit. It reframes profit within system viability.

Profit belongs primarily to the organisation.

Prosperity is shared between the organisation and the broader system it functions within.

This does not mean profit is unimportant. Organisations that cannot remain financially viable cannot sustain employment, invest in innovation, support communities, or contribute to long-term change. However, when profit becomes the dominant lens, decisions can easily externalise costs onto employees, customers, communities, suppliers, future generations, or the natural environment.

Prosperity broadens the scope of consideration. It includes financial performance but places it within a wider economic, social, and ecological context. A prosperous organisation is not simply one that makes money. It is one that contributes to the conditions that enable people, communities, economies, and ecosystems to adapt, survive, and flourish.

The Toyota Production System offers a useful example. Toyota’s approach to supplier relationships has long emphasised long-term capability, mutual trust, and mutual benefit. Suppliers are not treated merely as external costs to be driven down, but as part of the wider production system on which Toyota’s performance depends. When suppliers become more capable, reliable, and resilient, Toyota also becomes more capable, reliable, and resilient.

This is prosperity in a practical business sense. It applies to the organisation and to the system that enables it to create value.

The contrast is an extractive model in which a powerful buyer uses its market position to squeeze suppliers for lower prices, tighter terms, or greater risk transfer. This may improve margins in the short term, but it can weaken supplier viability, reduce trust, damage quality, discourage innovation, and make the wider system more brittle.

Prosperity, therefore, asks a different question. Not simply: how much value can we capture? But: what relationships, capabilities, and conditions must be strengthened so value can continue to be created?

The shift can be summarised as:

People, Planet, Profit asks organisations to balance three forms of performance.

People, Planet, Prosperity asks whether the organisation contributes to the long-term health and viability of the larger system of which it is a part.

Beyond “Less Bad”

One of the most important developments since Green Swans is the growing recognition that sustainability cannot stop at harm reduction. Reducing emissions, waste, exploitation, and ecological damage remains essential, but “less bad” is not the same as good.

Regenerative business thinking pushes the question further. It asks whether business can play a positive role in renewing ecological, social, and economic systems. Recent studies describe it as an emerging business approach focused on generating positive impacts on socio-ecological systems. However, they also caution that the term is still debated and may become vague or merely performative. (Salonen, Ritala, & Bocken, 2025). That warning matters.

Without tangible evidence, clear consequences, and consistent practice, regeneration risks becoming just another appealing slogan. While the language surrounding it might evolve, the core behaviors often stay unchanged. Therefore, regenerative initiatives must be rooted in concrete actions, measurable outcomes, accountability, and real-world impact.

Regeneration cannot remain at the level of aspiration. It must engage with Gemba. It must be tested through consequential intervention. It must show up in the real effects of organisational decisions.

Nature Enters the Boardroom

Since 2020, the sustainability conversation has also broadened beyond climate to include nature, biodiversity, land, water, and ecosystem resilience.

The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, adopted in 2022, aims to halt and reverse nature loss and sets global targets for 2030 and beyond (“Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework,” 2022). The emerging “nature positive” agenda expresses a similar goal,  halt and reverse nature loss by 2030 from a 2020 baseline, with full recovery by 2050 (“What is Nature Positive?,”).

This is an important shift for executives. Climate risk is no longer the whole story. Organisations also depend on soil, water, biodiversity, land systems, ecosystem services, community trust, social licence, and resilient supply networks. These are not external issues. They are conditions for continued viability.

The Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures released final recommendations in 2023 to help organisations disclose nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks, and opportunities  (“Recommendations  of the Taskforce on Nature-related  Financial Disclosures “, 2023). The Science Based Targets Network has also developed guidance to help companies assess impacts and set targets for nature, starting with freshwater and land (“The first science-based targets for nature,” 2023).

This signals a wider transition: nature is moving from corporate responsibility language into strategy, risk, reporting, investment, and governance.

From Voluntary Storytelling to Disclosure Discipline

Another important shift since Green Swans is the movement from voluntary sustainability storytelling toward more formal disclosure requirements.

The International Sustainability Standards Board issued IFRS S1 and IFRS S2 in 2023, establishing global sustainability and climate-related disclosure standards (“ISSB issues inaugural global sustainability disclosure standards,” 2023). The European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive requires many companies to report under European Sustainability Reporting Standards. In Australia, sustainability reporting requirements are being phased in, with the first reporting cohort required to prepare sustainability reports for financial years commencing on or after 1 January 2025 (“Making environmental claims A guide for business,” 2023) . This does not mean that reporting automatically drives transformation. Reports can still become compliance exercises, reputation management tools, or sophisticated forms of organisational theatre. However, the direction is clear: sustainability, climate, and nature-related impacts are becoming increasingly visible, comparable, and contestable.

At the same time, regulators are increasing scrutiny of environmental claims. Greenwashing occurs when sustainability claims misrepresent the true environmental impact of a business, product, or service (“Survey finds that most companies across nearly all sectors are going quiet on green goals,” 2024). Greenhushing has also emerged, where organisations reduce public communication about climate goals to avoid scrutiny, even when they continue internal work(“Corporate sustainability reporting,” 2025).

Both greenwashing and greenhushing point to the same underlying problem: the gap between claim and consequence.

ASF Interpretation

Within Adapt, Survive and Flourish, the Triple Bottom Line is best understood as a gateway concept.

It is accessible to executives because it begins with familiar language: performance, sustainability, risk, reporting, stakeholders, and long-term value. But its deeper value lies in where it leads.

Properly understood, Triple Bottom Line thinking opens the door to:

• Ecocentric vs Egocentric Thinking
• Organisational Ecology
• Consequential Intervention
• Stakeholder Engagement
• Trust
• Adaptive Capacity
• Regenerative Practice
• Stewardship

The shift from Profit to Prosperity is therefore not a cosmetic word change. It is a shift in worldview.

Profit asks: Did the organisation benefit?

Prosperity asks: Did the organisation and the wider system become more viable?

Profit can be extracted.

Prosperity must be cultivated.

Leadership Implications

For leaders, the move from Profit to Prosperity changes the nature of decision-making.

The question is no longer simply:

Will this improve our results?

It becomes:

What consequences might this create for people, communities, ecosystems, supply networks, trust, and future adaptive capacity?

This does not make leadership easier. It makes leadership more honest.

A prosperity lens requires leaders to expand their line of sight. It asks them to see beyond the immediate organisation, beyond the reporting cycle, and beyond narrow measures of performance. It requires attention to relationships, dependencies, externalities, long-term consequences, and the health of the systems that make organisational success possible.

This is not anti-business. It is better business.

A business that destroys the conditions that sustain it is not successful. It is merely profitable for a time.

In Summary

The Triple Bottom Line opened the door by challenging the dominance of financial performance as the sole measure of success.

The next step is to move from People, Planet, and Profit to People, Planet, and Prosperity.

Profit remains necessary, but prosperity is the broader aim. Prosperity recognises that organisations exist within living economic, social, and ecological systems. Their long-term success depends not only on what they extract from those systems, but on what they help regenerate, strengthen, and sustain.

The critical question is no longer whether an organisation can report across three bottom lines.

The critical question is whether its actions contribute to the flourishing of the larger system of which it is a part.

Explore further

This article connects to the broader framework:

• Ethical Domain — how constraints shape decisions
• Sensemaking Domain — how organisations interpret reality
• Relational Domain — how trust and coordination emerge
• Learning Domain — how knowledge is created and tested
• Action Domain — how intent becomes capability

To understand more on Purpose detailed Subject Areas, visit the Deep Dive section.

References

Corporate sustainability reporting. (2025, 9 December 2025). Retrieved from https://finance.ec.europa.eu/financial-markets/company-reporting-and-auditing/company-reporting/corporate-sustainability-reporting_en

Elkington, J. (2020). Green swans: the coming boom in regenerative capitalism: Greenleaf Book Group.

The first science-based targets for nature. (2023). Retrieved from https://sciencebasedtargetsnetwork.org/how-%20it-works/the-first-science-based-targets-for-nature/

ISSB issues inaugural global sustainability disclosure standards. (2023, 26 June 2023). Retrieved from https://www.ifrs.org/news-and-events/news/2023/06/issb-issues-ifrs-s1-ifrs-s2/

Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. (2022). Retrieved from https://www.unep.org/resources/kunming-montreal-global-biodiversity-framework

Making environmental claims A guide for business. (2023, December 2023). Retrieved from https://www.accc.gov.au/about-us/publications/a-guide-to-making-environmental-claims-for-business

Recommendations  of the Taskforce on Nature-related  Financial Disclosures (2023). Retrieved from https://tnfd.global/publication/recommendations-of-the-taskforce-on-nature-related-financial-disclosures/

Salonen, K., Ritala, P., & Bocken, N. (2025). Emerging regenerative business paradigm: Narrative review, synthesis, and research agenda. Journal of Circular Economy, 3(3).

Survey finds that most companies across nearly all sectors are going quiet on green goals. (2024). Retrieved from https://www.southpole.com/news/survey-finds-most-companies-going-quiet-on-green-goals

What is Nature Positive? Retrieved from https://www.naturepositive.org/what-is-nature-positive/