Better still: change the definition of "growth" to encompass more nuanced, non-quantifiable things like user happiness, employee happiness, etc.

those can be faked always that's why I personally don't like those kinda metrics.

why would the current shareholders want anything other than profit (which is by proxy measured by growth)?

Shareholders care not for employee happiness, in so far as said employee is working and producing. Ditto with user happiness - if they're not happy they can leave. By not leaving, they must be happy to stay.

I think these proposals to "change" the metrics is as flawed as the current system.

on of my favourite books is "Small Giants: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big" by Bo Burlingham. It's worth a read if this is something that interests you.

I agree in general, but network effect companies are highly vulnerable to being out-grown. A bigger rival with a bigger network is inherently more attractive to users, and it's competitive advantage increases exponentially with size.

The only way to avoid that I know is to address a specific target audience and scale up to dominate that. Tumblr has achieved this. A rival then can't dislodge you because you already own the relevant network. It's still risky though, because if a rival builds a product that covers the general audience and also servers that subset well, then the subset might decamp. Hence Tumblr trying to break out of it's niche. G+ addressed a lot of niches very well, but Google just wasn't interested in that kind of network.