S01:E03
Outlandish is a digital agency in Finsbury Park, London with no boss and no shareholders — a worker co-operative, owned and run by the people who do the work, that puts its profits into social projects like the community workspace Space4.
In this episode Chris spoke with two of its member-owners, Natasha Natarajan and Maddy Neghabian, about running a business by consent rather than hierarchy, and about a strange new problem: now that “it’s almost become mainstream to be good,” how do you explain why a genuinely democratic model is different? We get into surviving a shrinking market and the arrival of AI on their own terms, why co-ops remain so hard to fund, and the cultural barrier beneath it all — a business world still built around the lone entrepreneur. As they put it, “we take the risk together and we support each other.”
Listen and browse the full archive at https://content.changingthenarrative.media
Chapters: 00:00 Introduction 01:43 Exploring Outlandish’s mission and services 04:18 What sets Outlandish apart? 05:52 Outlandish’s unique selling point 09:13 Challenges in the co-op sector 11:59 Adapting to AI in the workplace 13:46 Maintaining cooperative values 16:41 The two-tiered system of membership 21:29 Funding challenges and the co-op model 25:30 The struggles of co-ops in a competitive landscape 29:18 Fostering collaboration and new business models 31:59 Co-op vs conventional business experience 34:56 Challenging conventional business narratives 35:23 Promoting co-op awareness and education
Outlandish: https://outlandish.com/ · Space4: https://space4.tech/ · Co-operatives UK: https://www.uk.coop/ · CoTech: https://coops.tech/
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