Can abundance be engineered from above, or must it emerge from below? This question animated the opening plenary of the Rhodes Forum on Technology & Society, where three speakers from vastly different worlds—streaming entertainment, international development, and indigenous finance—converged on a surprisingly unified answer.
The consensus, articulated most directly by UNDP Accelerator researcher Alberto Cottica, was unambiguous: "The way to abundance is by empowering communities to do their own thing and learn from them." This was not mere rhetoric. Each panelist, in their own domain, described hitting the ceiling of top-down approaches and discovering that genuine prosperity requires something more fundamental than policy prescriptions or technological fixes.
Madeline de Cock Buning, a vice president at Netflix, framed abundance as "a north star" for policymaking, but one that demands reverse engineering. Her conception is deliberately expansive: abundance means a diversity of narratives and representation, which in turn generates empathy. Skills development, she argued, cannot be mandated from on high. "One can't give instructions for a ship to be built," she observed. "People must crave the sea."
For Brian Wyborn, whose work at Aboriginal Investment NT operates at the intersection of capital and cultural preservation, thinking in abundance requires confronting a darker inheritance. "Our narrative is one of dispossession," he noted, before pivoting to the potential he sees. Abundance, in his framework, emerges from shared values and pluralistic identities—a conception of purpose that transcends traditional shareholder value. "The capacity is there," Wyborn insisted. "Our role is to be catalytic." The future state exists; what's missing is the unlocking of latent capabilities.
This emphasis on capacity building recurred throughout the discussion, crystallized in Wyborn's observation: "You can't be what you can't see." It's a constraint that technology alone cannot solve. When moderator Paul Cadario pressed on the relationship between foundational capacity and technological tools, Cottica was direct: technology is "a big tool in the toolbox," most powerful when customized for spaces lacking infrastructure. However, the technology question, like most things, proved complicated.
What emerged most forcefully was a challenge to economic determinism itself. "Economy is a choice, not a destiny," Cottica declared—perhaps the session's most provocative claim. It suggests that the narratives societies construct about scarcity and abundance are not neutral descriptions but active shapers of reality. As Cadario put it: "The stories societies tell about themselves shape more than history."
The panel offered no blueprint, no five-point plan for achieving abundance. That would contradict its central insight. Instead, it suggested that abundance requires cultivating the conditions for communities to discover their own paths—and having the humility to learn from what they create. In an age of grand technological promises and top-down solutions, this may be the most radical proposal of all.
Azania Imtiaz Patel (India & Brasenose 2020) leads the LIPI Library at Equitech Futures. She is the co-founder of India Ghost Project and previously reported for The Economist.