What makes Switzerland prosper — when you measure more than money? The Swiss Impact & Prosperity Initiative (SIPI), hosted by B Lab Switzerland, has published version 1.6 of the PROSPER Compass, a Swiss framework for measuring, analysing and imagining prosperity beyond what GDP can see.
The Compass reads prosperity through seven interconnected pillars — from Purpose & Wellbeing to Resilient Economies — and asks one guiding question: are our choices strengthening the conditions that enable people, communities, businesses and ecosystems to thrive over the long term? Progress on one pillar is never allowed to offset a breach on another: the framework is deliberately non-compensatory, anchored in a net-positive principle familiar to every company that has been through a B Corp assessment.
What V1.6 brings
The framework’s architecture was ratified on 1 September 2026 by a thirteen-expert panel, and the V1.6 text with its indicator registry followed on 11 September. It carries 116 indicators across three levels — 37 for enterprises, 38 for cantons, 41 for the nation — built Swiss-first on Federal Statistical Office and MONET 2030 series, Cercle Indicateurs data, and VSME/ESRS-aligned disclosures at enterprise level. For companies, that last point matters: the enterprise tier is grounded in the EFRAG VSME standard, so an SME can engage with the framework using disclosures it may already prepare — no parallel reporting universe.
Why it matters for business
Switzerland slipped from first to third place in the 2026 IMD World Competitiveness Ranking, driven almost entirely by the Economic Performance factor. The message of the Compass is not alarm but capability: future prosperity depends on the capacity to anticipate, learn, adapt and transform as conditions change — and on measuring whether growth actually converts into enduring prosperity. The PROSPER Compass Diagnostic, the framework’s measurement tool, gives companies a structured way to read their own contribution across all seven pillars, with published coverage rules and no composite greenwash-friendly single score.
An open invitation
A prosperity compass is only as strong as the community that builds it. SIPI is inviting:
- Pilot organisations — SMEs, large enterprises and public-sector bodies — to test the Diagnostic on their own data between January and March 2027;
- Data owners and statisticians to help close the framework’s watch-list gaps, from nature connectedness to the insurability of climate risks;
- Researchers and practitioners to co-develop the methodology;
- Everyone to join the Rethinking Prosperity: Shared Narratives for 2040 process, feeding the publication expected in February/March 2027.
Explore the framework at impact.swiss/prosper, build your own prosperity profile at impact.swiss/prosper/profile, or get involved via impact.swiss/join. And meet the team in person: on 29 October 2026, the UN International Day of Care and Support, the SIPI Forum in Geneva presents the first Voices and Questions results — details at impact.swiss/events.
