I think the word that you are looking for would be antifragile, a term Nassim Taleb recently coined. We don’t just want to just be sustainable, robust, and survive, the booms and busts of life, we want to improve and be stronger because of them. Another word would be evolution.
Anyway here is a Taleb explaining what he means by antifragility
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2012/01/taleb_on_antifr.html
