Episode 17: Growth Is Not the Only Goal

We are constantly told that growth equals success.

That scaling is progress.

That innovation means moving faster, bigger, and further no matter the cost.

But what if growth itself has become the problem?

In this episode of Builders of the Broken Bazaar, Dr Tabish Zaman is joined by Kasper Benjamin Reimer Bjørkskov, Founder of No Objectives, to challenge one of the most deeply embedded assumptions in entrepreneurship, innovation, and design.

This is not a conversation about sustainability as a checkbox.

It is not about green growth or better metrics.

It is a conversation about repair.

Drawing on Kasper’s work in post-growth design, systems change, and collective action, the episode explores what happens when innovation stops chasing expansion and starts taking responsibility for the harm it leaves behind.

Together, they discuss:

• Why climate collapse and social collapse are the same design failure

• How optimisation without empathy leads to extraction, not progress

• Why growth has replaced meaning and what that has cost us

• How systems are designed to concentrate power rather than distribute care

• Why sustainability is an outcome, not a process

• What regenerative design requires in a world already in overshoot

• Why collective action matters more than individual heroics

• How innovation should be measured by restoration, not valuation

🎙 “Not all innovation builds. Some of it repairs.”

This episode challenges founders, designers, policymakers, and anyone working inside systems that claim to create value while quietly producing harm.

Because if growth is not the goal, we are forced to ask a harder question:

What are we actually building for and who does it serve?

Host: Dr Tabish Zaman

Guest: Kasper Benjamin Reimer Bjørkskov (Founder, No Objectives)

Technology Isn’t Neutral. It’s Cultural.

We are constantly told technology is neutral.

That algorithms are objective.

That design is “just technical.”

But technology doesn’t appear from nowhere.

It is built by people, shaped by culture, and assembled through decisions, decisions that increasingly determine who gets a job, who gets a mortgage, and who receives medical care.

In this episode of Builders of the Broken Bazaar, Dr Tabish Zaman is joined by Glenn Block (Founder & CEO, ProdSense) to unpack what the tech industry often refuses to name:

Neutrality is not the absence of bias.

It is often the protection of privilege.

This is not a conversation about hype.

It is a conversation about responsibility and what happens when innovation scales faster than care.

Together, they explore:

• Why “neutral technology” is a dangerous myth

• How culture shapes design decisions long before launch

• What product equity means in practice, not as a slogan

• Why exclusion is often designed in, not discovered later

• Who is missing from the rooms where products are imagined

• How startup culture rewards speed, not accountability

• Why accessibility and inclusion cannot be retrofitted after harm

• And what responsible innovation should demand from entrepreneurs, designers, and institutions

🎙 “The bias isn’t in the zeros and ones it’s in how we assemble them.”

This episode is a challenge to founders, innovators, and anyone building systems that touch other people’s lives. Because if technology reflects our culture, we have to ask:

what kind of world are we building and for whom?

At Christmas, we are told stories about generosity and togetherness.

But in many UK cities, the reality looks very different.

Shrinking public services.

Widening inequalities.

Communities carrying more with less.

In this Christmas Special of Builders of the Broken Bazaar, Dr Tabish Zaman returns to Hull — a city often reduced to statistics, but held together by people.

Joined by Paul Hamnett, CEO of the Hull KR Foundation, and Vikki Tate, Employability and Skills Manager, this episode explores how a rugby league club has become a form of social infrastructure.

This is not a story about sport.

It is a story about belonging, dignity, and civic repair — and what happens when community organisations step in where systems fall short.

Together, they explore:

• How sport becomes a vehicle for trust and connection

• Why community organisations now fill gaps left by shrinking public services

• How youth employment, mental health, education, and inclusion intersect

• Why prevention is undervalued — and crisis is always more expensive

• What real inclusion looks like beyond slogans

🎙 “When a sporting institution becomes social infrastructure, it’s worth asking why it had to.”

This episode reframes rugby not as entertainment, but as care.

A conversation about leadership rooted in service.

About communities holding the social fabric together.

And about what Christmas really means in places rarely associated with hope.