What is the FairShares Commons?

The FairShares Commons is a groundbreaking organizational design that incorporates the principles of multi-stakeholder governance, stewardship, regenerative economics, and self-determination and agency. It's development has been headed by Evolutesix CEO Graham Boyd.

It is a model of business that reimagines traditional corporate structures and patterns by ensuring that power, decision-making, and wealth are distributed equitably among all material stakeholders. Depending on the specific context and driver, this may include investors, workers, consumers, the communities and environments that the business impacts, and always future generations.

At its core, the FairShares Commons enables and protects shared stewardship over organizations, conceived not as machines to be extracted from, but living systems to be stewarded towards their potential. Assets and resources are still commodities to be traded, but the company itself is a commons—resources that exist for the collective benefit of present and future generations.

In this way, this model is a next step in the long history of emancipating individuals and communities, and has been implemented for businesses all over the world for the past decade.

In approaching business as a commons, it restores the natural complexity of economic affairs, a key element of this design choice becomes the embedded developmental dialogue practices, supporting the self-determination and internal capacities of its participants.

By incorporating all forms of capital—financial, natural, human, social, and intellectual—it enables businesses to operate regeneratively and circularly, aligning profit with purpose in ways that benefit society, the environment, and the economy as a whole.

Importantly, the FairShares Commons can be operated effectively in currently existing legal frameworks around the world – needing no new policy developments.

Key Features:

1. Multi-Stakeholder Governance: Different stakeholder groups (e.g., investors, workers, customers, the environment, future generations) each hold shares in the company, which gives them either financial rights or voting rights, or both, always information rights, and a voice in strategic decisions.

2. Stewardship: Ownership is replaced by stewardship and is shared among stakeholders, preventing monopolization of power by any single group. This enables fair wealth distribution and more considerate decision-making.The FairShares Commons includes legal protections to prevent extractive practices, enabling businesses to be stewarded for their individual success in an ecosystem working towards the common good, not sold off or exploited for personal financial gain.

3. Regenerative Economics: The FairShares Commons considers the need to regenerate all capitals (natural, social, human, and financial), in part lending to the design’s long-term antifragility and short term adaptiveness.

4. Self Determination and Agency: The FairShares Commons build on the tradition of Teal companies, creating working environments that favor self-deterministic and agency-based approaches to work. Embedded developmental dialogue practices create a scaffolding so members of the organization can extend beyond their capacities and grow, whilst having the necessary support to do so safely.

Why is it Important?

The FairShares Commons provides a design pathway for businesses to operate in a way that is more aligned with human and planetary well-being, unlike traditional business design patterns that tend to prioritize profits at the expense of broader societal and environmental health. It fosters collaboration over competition, long-term value creation with short-term adaptability, fair wealth flow over concentration, and the power of agency and self-determination.

This model is particularly well-suited for companies committed to creating a net-positive impact on society and the environment, making it a critical building block for a truly regenerative economy.

Want to build your own?

Reach out to us to scope how or start by yourself with our intro course.