Creating a Regenerative Business
Richard Pedley Feb 2020
At Regenpreneur we offer a $70 course on creating a regenerative strategy for your business.
To me, the most important part of the strategy is establishing a vision that creates a purpose for driving business activities. Johnston et al (2018) identify that creating a clear business identity around a mission, vision, values, and objectives as a highly effective first step in being able to create a niche of value within its market. For me, this requires a deep understanding of the environment in which a business is positioned. With a background in ecology and regenerative farm design, the concept of understanding how a business is integrated within and impacts upon the ecosystem within which it is part has great relevance in guiding my vision and strategy of how a business should operate.
My approach to understanding this context is that within a natural ecosystem a living thing is interconnected with a diverse range of other living things that share its habitat through mutually beneficial interactions. These interactions act to recycle resources and slow energy transfer through that system. This, in turn, promotes the overall health of that system, improves its stability and enhances that environment to support the flourishing of life. This is observed in how an ecosystem, such as a forest, increases in diversity and stability over time and how the efficiency of recycling of matter and use of energy improves with an increase in diversity of inter-connections. Remarkably, this not only stabilises and improves the health of that ecosystem but to some measure, all other ecosystems on Earth and even impacting upon non-living systems (the hydrosphere, atmosphere, and lithosphere) to change the properties of those systems in ways that benefit the continued sustenance of life.
Creating restorative businesses based on ecological design is gaining increasing popularity within publications as seen by Paul Hawken’s book ‘the ecology of commerce’ (2010), that sets out eight imperatives for creating an ecologically restorative economy and Giles Hutchins book ‘the nature of business’ (2013), that explores the transformation changes required to redesign ecologically resilient businesses.
To me, this understanding creates a central philosophy to guide the way businesses and activities should be guided. By coming to understand the function of living systems we can replicate this pattern within the design of businesses to create health-promoting outcomes that regenerate ecosystems. As noted by Crowther et al. (2016) global climate changes may be already past the tipping point, making innovative business-driven solutions imperative.
References
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Hawken, P. (2010). The ecology commerce: a declaration of sustainability. Harper Business, New York.
Hutchins, G. (2013). The nature of business: redesign for resilience. New Society Publishers, Canada.
Johnson, G; Whittington, R; Scholes, K; Angwin, D; Regner, P. (2018). Fundamentals of strategy. Fourth Edition. Pearson Education Ltd. UK.
Knights, D., & Willmott, H. (2007). Introducing Organizational Behaviour and Management. Thomson Learning.
Lafley, A & Martin, R. (2013). Playing to win: how strategy really works. Boston: Harvard Business Press.
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