Financial Gravity Pushes Successful Companies Toward Extraction
Lean Startup author Eric Ries argues that scale can corrupt companies by pulling them away from creating value and toward extracting it—a pressure he calls “financial gravity.” In a conversation with Krista Tippett, Ries says this drift is not inevitable: companies such as Costco, Patagonia and Novo Nordisk show that organizations can resist it, and he makes the case that trustworthiness is an economic asset, not just an ethical ideal.
Masters of Scale·Nov 11, 2026·11 min read
