Technology and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) issues have become some of the fundamental pillars for virtually any entrepreneur or businessperson looking to grow. The era of sustainability has passed. Unfortunately, our planet and our existence now require a new proposition. It’s no longer sufficient for businesses to be sustainable. They need to have an active role in regenerating our ecosystem.
Hence the need to move towards a new era of Regenerative Business, actively engaging with restorative models, from both people’s and the business’s perspective. These models go beyond achieving net-zero impact or carbon neutrality in their chain. They manage to develop formats that prioritize the restoration of the ecosystems they are part of.
In this model, the business processes created by the company are conceived, literally, to be regenerative for the environment in which they have an impact. This means not only using renewable inputs but going further and creating ways in which the very logic of extracting these inputs allows the ecosystem to flourish even more due to the company’s presence in the extraction environment.
Nature itself is entirely efficient and self-regenerative. Consider that corporate regenerative systems are us, humans, acting and doing things like nature itself (regenerative living systems).
There are four environments for regeneration to occur systemically: in businesses, in the economy, in people, and in organizational culture. From the perspective of the first two, we need to understand that transformations take place within the business model. And from the last two, they awaken at the level of self-awareness.
Whether on one side or the other, if the company does not integrate and incorporate the ability to generate and capture value, the impact does not become systemic. In other words, without developing new skills and competencies, no business can say that it is undergoing transformation.
Although very relevant today, technologies alone are not the answer. It is not enough to train leadership in Artificial Intelligence if there is no impact on the business model or operation of your company the next day. However, mastery of technological skills is precisely what ensures agility in transformation journeys.
Regeneration goes beyond resilience and sustainability. It is a strategy that drives the company and requires it to become a protagonist in its impact chain. Regenerative business models require a holistic approach, where business processes are intentionally planned to be beneficial to the ecosystem.
Technology as an enhancer of business transformation
Despite the various concerns about the exponential use of AI solutions significantly increasing electricity consumption worldwide, technology itself is also a path to the solution.
In the early versions of blockchain, we experienced an intensive need for electricity, including to cool data processing structures. However, more streamlined formats of solution architecture and new technologies have allowed for a reduction of over 90% of this consumption in the more recent generations of Ethereum applications.
And when we look at AI, we begin to have a glimpse of this potentially promising scenario: Ark Invest points out that AI tools can increase the productivity of collaborating people by almost 140% in the next eight years. In financial terms, this equates to an increase of approximately US$ 50,000 per worker, resulting in US$ 56 trillion worldwide. This availability of time and resources could change the playing field for businesses that are ready for this transition.
However, only people and companies that are in a higher state of readiness for the agile changes we will experience in the coming years, whether climatic, behavioral, or technological, will be able to benefit from this new moment. In this context, learning tech skills is becoming increasingly relevant not only for IT areas of companies.
There is a high correlation between individuals who value continuous learning and the development of high-performance environments in companies. People with a growth mindset, those who constantly seek improvement and learning, bring a positive dynamic to the workplace. These individuals not only enhance their own skills but also inspire their colleagues to do the same, creating a virtuous cycle of development and innovation.
Conversely, companies that encourage learning and intellectual curiosity tend to have more robust and resilient organizational cultures. When employees feel they have the freedom and support to explore new ideas and acquire new knowledge, they feel more engaged and motivated. This not only increases job satisfaction but also contributes to higher productivity and efficiency.
It’s time to no longer have the privilege of pushing the problems we inherited onto future generations. The challenges of the future have never been so visible in our everyday lives. And the next generation of leaders needs to understand that the greatest barrier to a more promising future is our own inability to think differently and act. The mindset of leadership is our biggest threat to the future.
