Introduction

This book explores how cooperatives can and are meeting the challenges of a changing world. While concepts to describe the dire and unpredictable state of our world have proliferated—VUCA (Bennis & Nanus, 2007), poly-crisis (WEF), tipping-point (Lenton et al., 2019), wicked problems (Reinecke & Ansari, 2016), grand societal challenges (Ferraro et al., 2015), to name but a few—scientists across diverse disciplines are clear that the present is a particularly perilous time for our global civilization. Climate change has already begun to impose severe human and financial costs across the world. Digitalization has changed how we do business and relate to one another, in some cases, such as with generative AI, essentially overnight. At the same time, violent conflict and geopolitical tensions are again affecting the lives of millions. Across a host of other social, economic, and ecological themes—such as gender equality, poverty, and deforestation—our progress has stalled, if not reversed, as measured by the Sustainable Development Goals (Gutmann & Gorman, 2022).