Regenerative Business = Business as a Living-System

The question generated a strong visceral reaction. Immediately, we were filled with both hope and fear:

• Our protective instincts rose up. We do not want our daughter to have to face the greed and predatory ways of the business world. But we are proud of her; we want her to engage with Life to the fullest extent, and we want her intelligence to express itself.

• We want to hold her in the cocoon of our embrace, yet we also want to let her go so that she may blossom in her own ways. We want her to become her best person, without acquiring hardness, so that she may in turn do the same for the next generations.

• We want her to know the creative journey of starting and growing a business, of engaging the mind and the heart on the economic stage. But we don’t want her to face the “all or nothing” cruelty of the business world.

We imagined making a financial investment in her business. As an investor, how would we treat her? Would we push her towards maximization of returns? Towards extractive and transactional relationships? Towards prioritization of the short-term over the long-term? No, we would not. We would want her well-being, and her business, to be a reflection of her potential, drawing respect and leaving a legacy.

Why does the business sector operate in such a way as to cause such fears and contradictions? Do business and investing need to be defined in the way that they are today? And if not, how can we change them?

Business is a human activity, created by humans. It is a social system, therefore a living system. As a system, it is fully embedded within the human societal system, which is itself fully embedded within the earth's ecosystem. We use the term "socio-economic-ecological context" to describe the context within which business operates.

Regenerative Business is a way of being in business that brings it into regenerative relationship with its socio-economic-ecological context. 

A key characteristic of living systems is a metabolism-like activity in which a system takes in inputs, processes them according to its own internal characteristics thereby creating internal adaptions, then sends out outputs thereby also affecting its context. This is the general process of living: of constant transformation while being embedded within its context. This transformation leads to the adaptation and evolution of both the system itself, and its context in a deeply connected way that is called co-adaptation and co-evolution.

We can visualise a business as having a porous boundary, and being embedded within its context with which it has two-way flows of information and resources. As it adapts and evolves, so does its context. What differentiates a regenerative business is the ability to continuously adapt and evolve in response to both internal forces and external influences while maintaining its essential characteristics, and, leaving a healthy socio-economic-ecological context behind.

By ensuring that the businesses are regenerative, we can also ensure that the transformation of its context is regenerative. 

Consciousness & Regenerative Business

The word 'conscious' is being used increasingly frequently in business-related contexts. Some popular terms are: 'conscious business', 'conscious leadership'. 'conscious capitalism', 'conscious capital', and 'consciousness in business'. Typically, these terms imply that the goals of business activity have been expanded to include socio-economic-ecological considerations.

We know from living-systems principles that cognition is the basis of living systems' metabolic and evolutionary activities, and that in higher-order systems, cognition has a higher-order form called consciousness. Thus consciousness is inherent in human systems and is the basis for their regeneration. 

We propose that the holistic awareness that is necessary for regenerative performance cannot be achieved without a parallel shift in consciousness. More details are on the Developing Capabilities page.

Regenerative Business Is Gaining Attention as a Necessary Solution

The World Economic Forum recently (Mar 2023) posted an article on  the need to move beyond sustainability towards regenerative business in light of the severity of the polycrisis that we are facing. It argued that regeneration is a strategy that promotes the restoration and re-generation of natural resources and social systems.  A previous article had suggested that regenerative business may be the way to accelerate change. 

There has been decades of work done by veteran thinkers such as  Bill Reed, Carol Sanford, Daniel Christian Wahl,  Fritjof Capra, John Fullerton, Margaret Wheatley and others. These thinkers describe regeneration in a way that goes far beyond mere business strategy or resource management;  they expand it into a ‘way of being’. 

The Regenerative Investing Framework takes its inspiration from that level of deep thought.