GDP is the most influential indicator in the world. It is published all over the world and there is a powerful logistical infrastructure (the "GDP multinational") which involves national statistical offices, international institutes, policy researchers, academics, media and society. Yet GDP is not a good measure of sustainability or well-being and this is why hundreds of alternatives have been proposed in the last decades. This "Beyond-GDP cottage industry" is expanding all the time but there is no sign that it is going to threaten the dominance of GDP anytime soon. Replacing GDP by 2030 provides a strategy to overcome this situation by 2030 and Chapter 1 provides an outline of the arguments made in the book.

GDP was not always as successful as it is today. National income accounting has existed for centuries but only started to take off in the 1930s and 1940s in a handful of countries. These new macroeconomic statistics proved to be useful in managing the aftermath of the Great Depression and were invaluable in planning during the Second World War. Building on these successes, the period after the war proved to be the "Golden Age" for macroeconomics and its key indicator GDP. Growth targets were set by many governments and economists became the most influential policy advisors. A powerful institutionalised community emerged that is based on a coherent policy science (macroeconomics), accounting framework (the System of National Accounts, SNA) and a key indicator (GDP). The most important feature of any community is a common language, and the SNA serves as the dictionary and grammar book for macroeconomics. Whether you are a macroeconomist in Sri Lanka, Senegal or Slovenia, all use this common language. Macroeconomic thinking was in turmoil in the 1970s and after the 2008 financial crisis, but the underlying language has endured.

The history of Beyond-GDP is far more complex than the history of GDP because it is hard to define the boundaries of this field. Some fields have a long history: the measurement of Subjective Well-being (SWB) started just after the Second World War and Green Accounting emerged in the early 1970s. This chapter shows that there are basically four types of methodologies. Up to the early 1990s, the majority were green accounting or SWB indexes (conceptual indexes). After the publication of the Brundtland Report and subsequent Earth Summits, the other three types (composite indicators, and conceptual and non-conceptual indicator sets) also became popular. With the adoption of the SDGs in 2015, the situation became even more dynamic. The chapter shows that Beyond-GDP is a highly heterogeneous community without the powerful features of the GDP multinational. It is a community without a common language and is therefore incapable of communicating with each other or the rest of society. The only positive exception is the System of Environmental and Economic Accounts (SEEA), which provides the accounting framework and indicators for environmental macroeconomics.

GDP is a measure of economic activity but some economists are critical of this application. “An economy” is not an observable phenomenon and defining its “production boundary” is a matter of convention rather than an objective activity. There are many other methodological, theoretical and practical considerations which have become even more problematic because of ICT and globalisation. Other criticisms focus on the fact that GDP does not measure well-being, sustainability (or any other aspect of the future) or inequality. Some argue that GDP is a good proxy for the quality of life, because income is a necessary condition for positive aspects of lives such as education and health. This may be the case from a very long-term perspective or for developing countries, but many publications suggest that this conclusion is flawed because over the last few decades GDP has grown while well-being has not. Growing inequality, stagnant labour incomes and growing environmental pressures overshadow the growth of GDP.

The previous chapters have shown that there is one powerful community (“the GDP multinational") which is being challenged by a heterogeneous and weakly organised community (“the Beyond-GDP cottage industry). The ever-expanding range of Beyond-GDP initiatives will not lead to success however. A new strategy is based on the GDP success story and aims to create an institutionalised community with a clear goal and coherent structure based on a common language. The chapter argues that the community should not be based on the SDGs, green accounting or the SEEA. It also argues that the community should not be based on economic terminology and theory but rather on multidisciplinary building blocks such as stock/flow accounting, networks and limits. The aim of the community is to enhance well-being and sustainability and one of its most important features is its common language: the System of Global and National Accounts (SGNA). The SGNA has four system accounts (environment, society, economy and distribution), which describe how the systems are developing. However, this does not yet tell people whether the developments are good or bad. This is left to the quality accounts.