This project challenges traditional cognition-based research methods. While informative, they do not fully capture the complexity of economic transformation. This hinders our ability to support regenerative entrepreneurs in their journey toward a fair and sustainable economy. At AUAS Centre for Economic Transformation, our search for a more integrative approach to building new business models, led us to arts- and nature-based research. We are intrigued by art- and nature-based research as a tool to integrate cognitive, emotional and practical elements (head/ heart/ hands). Our curiosity led us to the following research question: how can innovative methodologies that focus on lessons from the arts (creativity) and nature (diversity) help to enrich the understanding of economic transformation among researchers and entrepreneurs engaged in regenerative practices. This study employs an action-oriented research approach, including progressive learning and reflective monitoring and evaluation. During workshops the researchers and entrepreneurs go outside and collect pieces of nature. With these materials they compose their own work of art. Participants, under guidance, step-by-step, 'engage in dialogue' with their artwork based on their own question, eventually experiencing (a direction to) an answer. This project brings together researchers with expertise in the diverse fields of entrepreneurship, craftsmanship, co-ownership and economic ecosystems and entrepreneurs of regenerative practices. They emerge themselves in innovative research methods aimed at integrating head, heart, and hands to enhance diversity and creativity and enrich their understanding of economic transformation. The presentation will be enriched by the works of Claudy Jongstra, a Dutch artist and regenerative entrepreneur.
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We propose aesthetic engagement as a valuable construct for organisation studies to advance its contribution to organising for sustainability. Aesthetic engagement is defined as a set of material practices that re-engage humans and systems to trigger and accelerate transitions towards regenerative futures. We adopt an aesthetic, practice-based approach to study the emerging field of circular fashion, zooming in on six research projects evolving around bio-based textile design. Our results show that matter needs to matter more in sustainable organising in three key material practices: (1) re-presenting alternative systems, (2) re-imagining affective materialities and (3) re-claiming embodied ethical agency. Matter that reflects new ‘imagined’ realities - whether in artefacts, bodies or socio-material spaces - could greatly support stakeholder engagement and collective identity-building towards transitioning to regenerative futures.
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Regenerative forms of higher education are emerging, and required, to connect with some of the grand transition challenges of our times. This paper explores the lived experience of 21 students learning to navigate a regenerative form of higher education in the Mission Impact course at The Hague University of Applied Sciences. This semester-length course ran for two iterations with the intention of connecting the students with local transitions towards a more circular society, one where products are lasting and have multiple lives when they are shared, refurbished, or become a source for a new product. At the end of each iteration, the students reflected on their experience using the Living Spiral Framework, which served as basis for an interpretative phenomenological analysis of their journey navigating this transformative course. The results of this study include four themes; (1) Opting in—Choosing RHE, (2) Learning in Regenerative Ways, (3) Navigating Resistance(s), and (4) Transformative Impacts of RHE. These themes can be used by practitioners to design and engage with regenerative forms of higher education, and by scholars to guide further inquiry. van den Berg B, Poldner KA, Sjoer E, Wals AEJ. ‘Sweet Acid’ An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of Students’ Navigating Regenerative Higher Education. Education Sciences. 2022; 12(8):533. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci12080533
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Universities have the potential, and the responsibility, to take on more ecological and relational approaches to facilitating learning-based change in times of interconnected socioecological crises. Signs for a transition towards these more regenerative approaches of higher education (RHE) that include more place-based, ecological, and relational, ways of educating can already be found in niches across Europe (see for example the proliferation of education-based living labs, field labs, challenge labs). In this paper, the results of a podcast-based inquiry into the design practises and barriers to enacting such forms of RHE are shown. This study revealed seven educational practises that occurred across the innovation niches. It is important to note that these practises are enacted in different ways, or are locally nested in unique expressions; for example, while the ‘practise’ of cultivating personal transformations was represented across the included cases, the way these transformations were cultivated were unique expressions of each context. These RHE-design practises are derived from twenty-seven narrative-based podcasts as interviews recorded in the April through June 2021 period. The resulting podcast (The Regenerative Education Podcast) was published on all major streaming platforms in October 2021 and included 21 participants active in Dutch universities, 1 in Sweden, 1 in Germany, 1 in France, and 3 primarily online. Each episode engages with a leading practitioner, professor, teacher, and/or activist that is trying to connect their educational practice to making the world a more equitable, sustainable, and regenerative place. The episodes ranged from 30 to 70 min in total length and included both English (14) and Dutch (12) interviews. These episodes were analysed through transition mapping a method based on story analysis and transition design. The results include seven design practises such as cultivating personal transformations, nurturing ecosystems of support, and tackling relevant and urgent transition challenges, as well as a preliminary design tool that educational teams can use together with students and local agents in (re)designing their own RHE to connect their educational praxis with transition challenges. van den Berg B, Poldner K, Sjoer E, Wals A. Practises, Drivers and Barriers of an Emerging Regenerative Higher Education in The Netherlands—A Podcast-Based Inquiry. Sustainability. 2022; 14(15):9138. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14159138
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Our planet’s ecology and society are on a collision course, which manifests due to a contradiction in the assumptions of unlimited material growth fueling the linear economic paradigm. Our closed planetary ecosystem imposes confined amounts of space and a finite extent of resources upon its inhabitants. However, practically all the economic perspectives have been defiantly neglecting these realities, as resources are extracted, used and disposed of reluctantly (Ellen MacArthur Foundation 2015). The circular economy attempts to reconcile the extraction, production and usage of goods and resources with the limited availability of those resources and nature’s regenerative capabilities This perspective entails a shift throughout the supply chain, from material science (e g non-toxic, regenerative biomaterials) to novel logistical systems (e g low-carbon reverse logistics). Because of this, the circular economy is often celebrated for its potential environmental benefits and its usefulness as a blueprint for sustainable development (Ellen MacArthur Foundation 2017). Unfortunately, the promise of the circular economy aiming at enhanced sustainability through restorative intent and design (McDonough & Braungart 2010), is often inhibited by institutional barriers posed by the current linear economy of take, make, use and waste (Ghisellini et al. 2016). Underlying those barriers our cultural paradigm celebrates consumerism, exponential growth and financial benefit instead of human values such as diversity, care and trust. Based on a mapping exercise of the circular economy discourse in the Netherlands and an overview of international (academic) literature (Van den Berg 2020) supplemented with collaborative co-creation sessions, visiting events, conferences, giving talks and classes, we have defined a gap leading to the focus of the Professorship. First, we highlight the importance of a process approach in studying the transition from a linear to a circular economy, which is why we use the verb ‘entrepreneuring’ as it indicates the movement we collectively need to make. The majority of work in the field is based on start-ups and only captures snapshots while longitudinal and transition perspectives - especially of larger companies - are missing (Merli et al. 2019; Geissdoerfer et al. 2018; Bocken et al. 2014). We specifically adopt an entrepreneurship-as-practice lens (Thompson, Verduijn & Gartner 2020), which allows us to trace the doings – as opposed to only the sayings - of organizations involved in circular innovation. Such an approach also enables us to study cross-sector and interfirm collaboration, which is crucial to achieve ecosystem circularity (Raworth 2019). As materials flow between actors in a system, traditional views of ‘a value chain’ slowly make way for an ecosystem or value web perspective on ‘organizing business’. We summarize this first theme as ‘entrepreneurship as social change’ broadening dominant views of what economic activity is and who the main actors are supposed to be (Barinaga 2013; Calás, Smircich & Bourne 2009; Steyaert & Hjorth 2008; Nicholls 2008). Second, within the Circular Business Professorship value is a big word in two ways. First of all, we believe that a transition to a circular economy is not just a transition of materials, nor technologies - it is most of all a transition of values We are interested in how people can explore their own agency in transitioning to a circular economy thereby aligning their personal values with the values of the organization and the larger system they are a part of Second, while circularity is a broad concept that can be approached through different lenses, the way in which things are valued and how value is created and extracted lies at the heart of the transition (Mazzucato 2018). If we don’t understand value as collectively crafted it will be very hard to change things, which is why we specifically focus on multiplicity and co-creation in the process of reclaiming value, originating from an ethics of care Third, sustainability efforts are often concerned with optimization of the current – linear – system by means of ecoefficient practices that are a bit ‘less bad’; using ’less resources’, causing ‘less pollution’ and ‘having less negative impact’. In contrast, eco-effective practices are inherently good, departing from the notion of abundance: circular thinking celebrates the abundance of nature’s regenerative capacities as well as the abundance of our imagination to envision new realities (Ellen MacArthur Foundation 2015). Instead of exploiting natural resources, we should look closely in order to learn how we can build resilient self-sustaining ecosystems like the ones we find in nature. We are in need of rediscovering our profound connection with and appreciation of nature, which requires us to move beyond the cognitive and employ an aesthetic perspective of sustainability This perspective informs our approach to innovating education: aesthetics can support deep sustainability learning (Ivanaj, Poldner & Shrivastava 2014) and contribute to facilitating the circular change makers of the future. The current linear economy has driven our planet’s ecology and society towards a collision course and it is really now or never: if we don’t alter the course towards a circular economy today, then when? When will it become urgent enough for us to take action? Which disaster is needed for us to wake up? We desperately need substitutes for the current neo-liberal paradigm, which underlies our linear society and prevents us from becoming an economy of well-being In Entrepreneuring a regenerative society I propose three research themes – ‘entrepreneurship as social change’, ‘reclaiming value’ and ‘the aesthetics of sustainability’ – as alternative ways of embracing, studying and co-creating such a novel reality. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kim-poldner-a003473/
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Regenerative agriculture is increasingly seen as the way forward to safeguard soil fertility and with that economic, human and natural sustainability. The fashion industry, being very much reliant on inputs from the agricultural sector, can play a pivotal role in promoting regenerative practices. In order to do so however it needs to radically rethink its business model, or else it will not be able to reap all the possible benefits.
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Research and practice show how regenerative business models contribute to restoration of the socio-ecological system, that human and natural aspects are at the core of their values and that co-evolution or co-creation are a key aspect. That being said, the regenerative business model is still a relatively new concept and there is no consensus about it's precise meaning or a framework to understand and support it. To explore this concept, a group of approximately 50 experts in the field of sustainability and/or business was invited to engage in a Delphi panel from November 2022 to January 2023. The objective was to develop a working definition for the concept ‘regenerative business model’ including a set of key aspects that characterize such a business model. This extended abstract shows preliminary findings from this Delphi study.
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Amidst escalating environmental and social challenges, this study explores regenerative business models’ definition and characteristics. While sustainable models have made considerable strides in research, policy, and practice, the advent of regenerative business models offers a progressive leap forward. Regenerative business models aspire to contribute to ecological restoration and societal well-being. The regenerative business model concept is, however, still in its infancy and lacks a comprehensive definition. Our study aims to expand this knowledge, using a Delphi-inspired approach that builds on the knowledge of academic and business experts. Our approach includes three rounds of surveys: an open-ended survey, a survey for rating and ranking the earlier responses of all participants, and a final survey to select key characteristics. We investigate patterns and distinctions among regenerative, regenerative business, and regenerative business models, and analyze their positioning vis-a-vis circular and net-positive models. Findings underscore that organizations adopting regenerative business models focus on planetary health and societal well-being. They generate value across multiple stakeholder levels, including nature, societies, customers, suppliers, shareholders, and employees. Despite overlapping with circular and net-positive models, regenerative business models also emphasize interdependencies between humans and nature, and provide a more holistic approach, centered on restoration rather than mere mitigation.
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At the age of a failing economic system and undeniable evidence of the effects humankind has had over the planet, it is necessary to look for alternatives to the way we live locally. This article explores the use of designing narratives and metanarratives to co-create imaginaries serving as the needed alternatives. This research starts by considering the historical factors to understand how industrialisation and the loss of traditional practices created a culture of disconnection from Nature in the Girona area, but also looks at why people start now reconnecting with it. The analysis is the foundation for speculative design practices to co-create a new local narrative of connection and regeneration. The project adopted the Integrative Worldviews Framework and used paradoxes to create possible future worldviews based on historical factors and literature. Citizens participated in conversational future-visioning workshops to develop and evaluate their local imagery of the previously created worldviews. This conversation-based exercise evidenced the potential of paradoxes in destructive futures to create imaginaries of regeneration. These imaginaries merge and form future stories. From the future narratives, the practice created cultural artefacts embodying a new culture of connection based on storytelling, traditional jobs, and a mythological understanding of Nature. Finally, as observed at the end of the project, these artefacts allow citizens to adopt them as their culture and expand their current worldview.
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Strengthening sustainability in global supply chains requires producers, buyers, and nonprofit organizations to collaborate in transformative cross-sector partnerships (CSPs). However, the role played by nature in such partnerships has been left largely unattended in literature on CSPs. This article shows how strategizing nature helps CSPs reach their transformative potential. Strategizing nature entails the progressive revealing and reconciling of temporal tensions between “plants, profits, and people.” We show how a CSP took a parallel approach—recognizing the divergent temporalities of plants, people, and profits as interlaced and mutually determined—toward realizing their objective of implementing living wages in a sub-Saharan African country’s the tea industry, simultaneously driven by the revitalization of tea plantations. The promise of better quality tea leaves allowed partners to take a “leap of faith” and to tackle pressing issues before the market would follow. Our findings thus show the potential of CSPs in driving regenerative organizing.
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