Regenerative Development:

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Edward QuevedoAssociate Professor of
Sustainable EnterpriseResearch Fellow, Center
for Sustainable BusinessLokey Graduate School of
BusinessMills College

• Regenerative Development
• Examining Opportunities Beyond Sustainability

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Our conversation

• time for a rethink?
• strategy is dead.
• strategic sustainability and CSR? not so much
• terrain for new learning
• ecosystems services model
• complex adaptive systems
• the players
• a new framework regenerative development

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The Earth Charter (UNEP/UNDP 1999)

• Build democratic societies that are just,
  sustainable, participative, and peaceful
• Secure the natural bounty and beauty for present
  and future generations
• Protect and restore the integrity of ecosystems,
  especially the natural processes that sustain
  life
• Use prevention as the best environmental
  protection device and when knowledge is limited,
  apply the precautionary principle
• Adopt patterns of production, consumption, and
  reproduction that protect the ecosystems
  regenerative capacities, human rights, and
  community well-being
• The Global Compact
• (Ratified at Davos, 1999)

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What is Sustainability and why are our
organizations pursuing it?

• What are the motivating factors?
• How did this become a priority?
• How has this served the core purposes of our
  enterprises?

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Confronting a rethink of Sustainability.

• Current context
• Overused, poorly defined, largely non-strategic
  (core) to the enterprises functioning
• The macro-level systems we aim to sustain are
  continuing to weaken
• Kyoto, Rio II, and other international accords
  continue to elude or disappoint us
• And.

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• strategy is dead

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• We have found that strategic planning is no
  longer of value. It leaves us without the
  flexibility to act with acuity, does not link up
  with day to day activities, and wastes valuable
  time generating paperweight documents.
• Hans Straberg
• CEO, Electrolux AG
• March 2013

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• Strategy is not now a core function for Sony.
  Our goal is instead to align our business
  trajectory with conditions in our ecosystem. To
  do this, we must first understand our ecosystem.
  Then we must think like expert biologists.
• Bert Nordberg
• CEO, Sony Ericsson
• August, 2012

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• We are in search of a fundamentally new approach
  to modeling our future. Strategy offers nothing
  anymore as a viable tool for us. Too much effort
  for too little return..
• Paul Todd
• VP Strategy, eBay Marketplaces
• October 2012

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What Does Applied Sustainable Development Look
Like?

• What does it create in the world?
• What do its artifacts look like?
• What is left behind, as evidence of our
  principles?

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The Players
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• Design for social impact
• Declaration of human potential
• Value chain principles

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• Partnership with Nature
• Tools for social innovation
• Virtuous supply chain

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• Eco systems modeling of supply chain
• Design innovation and being indigenous
• Futuring and complex adaptive systems

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a new framework emerges
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Apparent rules of the new framework

• There is no expertise for the categories of
  problems that we face
• Rapid prototyping, based on Natures model, looks
  an apparently sound tool
• Pursuit of effective understanding of the future
  requires re-consideration of the fundamentals of
  our approach to the stakeholder concept

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Apparent rules of the new framework

• Complex adaptive systems theory (CAST) seems to
  hold promise for our needs
• Local interaction amongst diverse agents creates
  energy as they seek to understand each other and
  the world around them
• The goal is to sustain and enhance relationships,
  and when this is pursued, energy is released into
  the system
• This keeps the system alive and vibrant

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Complex Adaptive Systems Theory

• There is no control of the system, no
  understanding of the future, and no directed
  action for the participants
• Flexible, experimental interaction is the best
  available tool
• Over time, the borders between agents within the
  system (various stakeholders), melt, and these
  agents co-evolve in order to flourish and
  optimize themselves in the changing environment.

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Under these conditions

• Disruption of the system creates nutritive energy
• Control or perfect understanding is an illusion
• Planning is best done by virtue of potent
  inquiry, not description of alternate concrete
  futures
• What is durable is not the external attributes of
  the system, but the broad conditions of the
  agents shared purpose, values, rituals, and
  relations

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The goal then shifts

• From predicting the future.
• To continually co-creating the future in league
  with each other
• Or, understanding how to nurture the
  effectiveness of those aspects of our
  organization that are valued by internal agents
  and produce value for external agents

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Potent Inquiry

• Replace strategic planning exercises with key
  potent questions to explore on a regular basis
• Shift, pivot, elaborate, and creatively co-evolve
  on the basis of this inquiry

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Potent Questions

• How can we be clear about our purpose and values?
• How can these shape modes of communication that
  support interconnectedness among stakeholders?
• How can we optimize and design relationships in
  the system to foster resiliency, self-organizing,
  and construct a shared future?

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Potent Questions

• How can we encourage resiliency? Flexibility,
  durability, openness to learning
• How can we find unique, alternative outcomes,
  expressive of our purpose and values, already
  contained in the current system and its history?

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Potent Questions the core issue of trust

• How do we create sufficient trust and
  relationship well-functioning to support honest
  feedback and discussion
• How do we set the conditions for learning and
  creating together?
• How can we build shared criteria for
  decision-making?

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• The Grammar of Regenerative Development
• The enterprise and its leaders shall consider all
  undertakings and projects for approval by first
  determining
• How the undertaking or project will measurably,
• Over the medium and long term,
• Measurably improve the social, economic, and
  ecological well being of affected stakeholders.

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Reconsidering the Spectrum of Organizational
Performance
Regenerative Development
Performance
Sustainable Development
Time
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regenerative development?
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The Emergent Models

• Enterprises that give back more to Nature and
  Community than they take
• Communities that measurably build character, and
  measurably increase quality of life

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In other words.

• The shared pursuit of well-being
• A natural systems, or eco-systems, notion
• Each step in the chain contributes to greater
  well-being (vibrancy, resiliency, adaptability,
  thriving)

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Proposed

• The domain we formerly referred to as strategic
  planning
• And the domain of sustainable development .
• Are at bottom expressions of a common pursuit, a
  core human aspiration
• To identify and seek conditions of thriving in
  the face of an uncertain future

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Proposed The core gesture of Sustainability or
CSR is

• Futuring
• Examining the appropriateness, or fitness, of the
  enterprises purpose and positioning the
  enterprise to deal with potential future
  challenges
• In the context of a long term perspective taking
  into account limits to resources

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Legislating Regenerative Development
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Imagine the Impact if ISSP were to advocate for,
and the Obama Administration were to support
enactment of, the following

• The Congress, recognizing the profound impact of
  man's activity on the interrelations of all
  components of the natural environment,
  particularly the profound influences of
  population growth, high-density urbanization,
  industrial expansion, resource exploitation, and
  new and expanding technological advances
• Declares that it is the continuing policy of the
  Federal Government, in cooperation with State and
  local governments, and other concerned public and
  private organizations,
• To use all practicable means and measures,
  including financial and technical assistance,
• To create and maintain conditions under which man
  and nature can exist in productive harmony, and
  fulfill the social, economic, ecological, and
  other requirements of present and future
  generations of Americans.
• In order to carry out the policy set forth in
  this Act, it is the continuing responsibility of
  the Federal Government to use all practicable
  means, in order to.

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• Fulfill the responsibilities of each generation
  as trustee of the environment for succeeding
  generations
• Attain the widest range of beneficial uses of the
  environment without degradation, risk to health
  or safety, or other undesirable and unintended
  consequences
• Preserve important historic, cultural, and
  natural aspects of our national heritage, and
  maintain, wherever possible, an environment which
  supports diversity, and variety of individual
  choice
• Achieve a balance between population and resource
  use which will permit high standards of living
  and a wide sharing of life's amenities and
• Enhance the quality of renewable resources and
  approach the maximum attainable recycling of
  depletable resources.
• The Congress recognizes that each person should
  enjoy a healthful environment and that each
  person has a responsibility to contribute to the
  preservation and enhancement of the environment.
• The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969

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Discussion

• Lokey Graduate School of Business
• Mills College
• www.mills.edu
• T 415.806.0355
• equevedo_at_mills.edu