Reclaiming Our Language: The sterility of nature-inspired marketing jargon in SaaS

The language we use is not just a means of communication—it shapes the very way we think, feel, and act. When we speak of "growth," "ecosystems," or "organic reach," we are not just choosing words that sound appealing; we are tapping into deep-seated metaphors rooted in the natural world. This isn't accidental—it's a conscious choice, one designed to make relentless corporate expansion and profit-driven intensity appear natural and inevitable.

But at what cost?

The Language of Growth: A False Narrative

Let's start with a list of words commonly used in SaaS and marketing that originally had meanings connected to nature. It's long. It's very long.

• Growth: Originally referred to the natural increase of living organisms.
• Organic: Pertaining to living matter, now used to describe content that gains traction naturally.
• Ecosystem: A community of living organisms, now used to describe interconnected digital products and services.
• Nurture: Originally meant to care for living beings, now refers to guiding prospects through a sales funnel.
• Fertile: Describing soil rich in nutrients, now used to describe a "fertile" market or opportunity.
• Harvest: The act of gathering mature crops, now used to describe collecting data or profits.
• Seed: The first stage of plant growth, now refers to the initial investment or starting point of a project.
• Rooted: Initially about a plant’s anchoring system, now used to describe something foundational or essential.
• Bloom: The flowering of a plant, now used to describe when a business or idea is flourishing.
• Cultivate: Once about preparing soil for crops, now it’s about developing relationships or ideas.
• Horizon: Where the earth meets the sky, now used to describe the future or potential.
• Stream: A small river, now used for continuous data flow or digital content.
• Viral: Originally describing a virus's spread, now used to refer to content that rapidly gains popularity.
• Niche: A specialized environment in nature, now refers to a specialized market segment.
• Lifecycle: The series of changes in the life of an organism, now used to describe product or customer journeys.
• Sustain: Originally meant to support or nourish, now often used to describe maintaining growth or stability.
• Sprout: The beginning of plant growth, now used to describe the early stages of a project.
• Thrive: Describes robust health in nature, now used to describe success in business.

These terms create a narrative that suggests that relentless growth, scaling, and market domination are as natural as the changing of seasons or the sprouting of new life.

This framing does more than just soften the language of greed—it fundamentally distorts our understanding of what is natural, sustainable, and valuable.

Distancing from the Natural World

The frequent use of these terms in business and technology doesn’t just paint a picture of inevitability; it also distances us from the true concepts they originally represented.

• Hibernation becomes a foreign concept when growth is perpetual.
• Seasonality is ignored in favor of constant output and productivity.
• Cyclical patterns of nature, with their inherent ebbs and flows, are dismissed in the pursuit of continuous expansion.

By adopting these natural metaphors, we obscure the reality that many modern business practices are anything but natural.

The push for 24/7 productivity, the relentless demand for profit maximization, and the systemic undervaluing of rest, regeneration, and balance are fundamentally at odds with the rhythms of the natural world. Growth marketing embodies in its very language the seeds of a great lie

The Appropriation of Nature

There's something insidious about this linguistic shift. When we talk about "growth" in nature, we're talking about something beautiful and essential—a tree reaching towards the sun, a field blossoming with wildflowers. When businesses co-opt this language, they’re not just borrowing words—they're appropriating the values and emotions those words evoke.

This appropriation is used to justify practices that are, in reality, exploitative and unsustainable.

The natural world thrives on balance, diversity, and interdependence. In contrast, the growth championed by corporate language often comes at the expense of these very principles—leading to overexploitation of resources, disregard for worker wellbeing, and a relentless pursuit of profit over purpose.

Reclaiming Our Words and Our Values

It’s time to reclaim this language. Just as in the Alternative Entrepreneurialism Manifesto we seek to go back to the roots of the word entrepreneur and choose to focus on its meaning of adventure and reaching out, rather than its much more modern associations with greed and guruism, so"Growth" should not be a euphemism for unsustainable expansion; it should reflect genuine personal and communal flourishing. "Ecosystem" should inspire thoughts of balance and interdependence, not market dominance. Outsourcing work to a developing nation and circumventing local labor laws to maximise your profit is not a supplier 'ecosystem'. If you wan't a nature-inspired word for what you're doing, let's call it: predation.

In challenging the corporate misuse of these words, we can begin to reimagine a world where business practices are aligned with the natural world—where cyclical patterns, balance, and sustainability are seen not as barriers to profit but as essential components of a truly prosperous and meaningful life.

As a result the jobs and job adverts demanding '24/7' monitoring and action, the meetings where any downward trend is leapt on as if some great abberation of the laws of the universe had been unearthed, this constant feeling of having to make sure that it is somehow our personal responsibility as marketers to make sure that everything, always, goes up, even when we don't have the water, the seeds, the fertilisers or the light....stops.

Semantics matter. Changing the meaning of words is what oppressors do. Fighting for them is what the resistance does. Because without words we can rely on to describe our reality to others: we are isolated.

Let's stop glorifying growth for growth's sake and start valuing the kind of growth that nourishes us, our communities, and the planet, such as we lay out in the Alternative Entrepreneurialism Manifesto. Let’s reclaim the ideas that are being eroded through linguistic appropriation, and move forward in our careers mindful of realities that are older, deeper and more true than this greenwashing of greed allows for.

Let's call the lies out, every time we hear them, for the sake of the planet, the people and animals in it, and we humans, for whom growth requires nourishment not command.