Since Forum launched the Business Transformation Compass, there has been a growing interest in regenerative business. Learn more about just and regenerative businesses in an introductory 10-week English-speaking short course by our partners, Butterfly School. 

A Compass for Just and Regenerative Business 

In 2021, Forum for the Future published a Compass for Just and Regenerative Business in partnership with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. We co-created the report with a range of leading businesses such as Unilever, Kimberly-Clark and Nestle, through some challenging and fruitful conversations. We also involved some leading figures in regenerative and social justice thinking. Our shared aim was to write a practical guide to regenerative business, integrating social justice and presented in business-friendly language. 

The report lays out how a just and regenerative mindset will be the key to unlocking new ways of working and living. It sets out a new guiding star for businesses: an economy that sustains the wellbeing of all and the capacity of our natural world to replenish itself, while enabling long-term, broad-based prosperity. 

Although by nature challenging - shifting mindsets takes time and isn’t easy. The detailed sustainability issue and business function-specific guidance in the supplementary Critical Shifts Report was well received, with organisations such as IKEA retail and Ørsted appreciating the practicality and specificity of this guidance when using it to review and update their sustainability strategies. 

Growing interest in regenerative business 

Since then, we have seen a growing interest in the concept of regenerative business, building on the increasingly mainstream concept of regenerative agriculture and emerging thinking around regenerative investment.  Of course, this enthusiasm is possible due to a well-established field of system change (such as, the School of System Change) and growing field of regenerative approaches, with organisations who have been developing regenerative tools and methodologies for over thirty years. Practitioners like Carol Sanford, Regenesis Group, John Fullerton have developed regenerative thinking in the US; Giles Hutchins, Laura Storm, Daniel Christian Wahl in Europe, to name but a few. The field has also grown with the work of Indigenous leaders like Tyson Yunkaporta and Terrellyn Fearn collaborating with systems thinkers to cross-pollinate. 

A new learning platform: Butterfly School 

For many business people, a deep dive into this new paradigm can be overwhelming and often inaccessible. This is why we’re excited to share a new offering that’s just been launched. Butterfly School, an educational platform, offers online bite-sized learning and high-quality video content for companies to start out on this pathway towards regenerative business.  

Butterfly School was initiated by a business, for business. AxaClimate is a subsidiary of the Axa Group, innovating climate change insurance solutions. The founders, based in Paris, had their own epiphany two years ago about the need to act to prevent climate change and how this requires a paradigm shift to regenerative business. Knowing they couldn’t work alone, they have teamed up with learning organisation Lumia, specialised in regenerative business models, a creative production company La Jolie Prod, and Johan Clemençon, a seasoned regenerative practitioner, to design a short but transformative online learning experience. Laura Winn, previously head of Forum for the Future’s sister organisation the School of System Change, has come on board to lead partnerships with regenerative practitioners and business leaders worldwide, and oversee the English-speaking version  launching now. 

Butterfly School offers an introductory course with one hour of high-quality bite-sized video content per week over 10 weeks. There are also live weekly sessions, and dozens of interviews with pathfinders - business leaders, regenerative practitioners, scientists and philosophers. It’s perfect for people and working professionals looking to explore what regenerative business really means in a lively, self-directed way, around their work week. 

Time to transform 

This introduction can be transformative - as participants on the first French-speaking cohort have enthusiastically claimed - but it’s only the first step on the path. The next steps should not be for lonely pioneers but alongside critical friends like Forum for the Future, peers like AxaClimate and others from the course. There is a growing movement around the world towards regenerative business, leadership, economy, communities, full of potential to redefine humanity’s role on our planet. 

Register to learn more