Growth Engineering

Foreword

Growth is a complicated term.

Not all growth is considered to be good or beneficial. However, in technology, growth is often spoken about as velocity, scale, domination, or extraction. More users. More engagement. More revenue. Faster. Bigger. Relentless. But in nature, in culture, and in human development, growth looks different. Across many societies in the Global South, growth is cyclical, dimensional, and deliberate instead of linear and unrelenting, as represented by Western cosmologies. It is more relational—or seasonal. It is also constrained by context. For us to understand its trajectory, as the ancient Adinkra symbol Sankofa implies, we must learn and revisit narratives about where we’ve come from and make adjustments along the way. In other words, good product growth must be accountable to the systems it lives within and be adaptable when needed.

This is where Growth Engineering by Rita Okonkwo begins to matter.

At its best, growth engineering is not about manipulation or blind optimization. It is about learning. In other words, there is no growth without learning. And learning, when practiced with care, produces stability. Stability is what makes growth sustainable. I have long argued, through my work on the Pluriverse, that there is not always a single path forward to a problem—no universal solution that can be scaled without consequence. Technologies do not exist in isolation. They mediate behavior, shape norms, and quietly encode values. Every system ...