New Forms of Enterprise for Sustainability Speaker: Dr. Melanie Rieback Title: “Post-Growth Entrepreneurship”
All are warmly invited to attend.
Location: Congress Center “Le Benedettine” – Room A, Piazza S. Paolo a Ripa D’Arno, 16, 56125 Pisa, PI
🗓️ Date: Friday, July 11, 2025 🕔 Time: From 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM
The event is organized by Prof. Tommaso Luzzati as part of the summer school “Leveraging Ecological Economics to Advance the Sustainability Transition,” in collaboration with the MBE degree program from the Department of Economics and Management. 🔗 Summer School 2025 Details
Opening remarks will be given by Professor Giuseppe D’Onza, representing the Rector of the University of Pisa.
Melanie Rieback is an American computer scientist from Ohio who lives in the Netherlands. She’s an ethical hacker and the co-founder (and CEO) of Radically Open Security, a (mostly) nonprofit cybersecurity company. She also leads Nonprofit Ventures, an incubation program that helps startup founders break free from conventional business models by adopting alternative legal structures.
Rieback takes a critical stance toward the “Silicon Valley” startup culture, which she likens to raising chickens in cages—companies forced to grow rapidly and then liquidated, often ending in failure. For this reason, Nonprofit Ventures supports entrepreneurs interested in building new kinds of enterprises, essentially nonprofit ones, that aim to reduce the distortions caused by “financial extractivism.” Her work puts into practice the ideas of “post-growth economics” developed by scholars like Tim Jackson, Kate Raworth, and many others.
In summary, the Post-Growth Entrepreneurship (PGE) model proposed by Rieback offers a fresh and innovative perspective on the business world and startup ecosystems.