Towards Regenerative Business (Re:Biz)

The Re:Biz project explores how businesses can contribute to restoring and strengthening ecosystem health and regenerative capacity. By critically examining what regenerative business practices mean in practice, the project aims to increase knowledge about how companies can support nature while creating long-term business value.

Today, many companies focus on reducing their environmental and climate impacts. However, addressing the ongoing loss of biodiversity and the degradation of ecosystems requires more than that. Regenerative business is based on the idea that companies can actively contribute to restoring and strengthening nature. The project Towards Regenerative Business: A Critical Investigation of Ecosystem Regeneration in Practice (Re:Biz) examines how this can be put into practice, as well as the opportunities and challenges involved. The project explores regenerative business from a systems perspective, ranging from corporate strategies, business models, and products to their impacts on natural ecosystems.

Re:Biz brings together an interdisciplinary team of researchers from RISE, Karlstad University, and ETH Zürich, contributing expertise in business models, product and service design, systems transformation, and ecological systems. The project includes literature reviews, an analysis of current pioneers, place-based design sprints, and evaluations of practical approaches in forest environments and urban green spaces. In addition, roundtable discussions will be conducted with representatives from industry and wider society to explore what is required to enable a transition towards regenerative business.

The project is led by RISE and includes the project members Anneli Selvefors, Steven Sarasini, and Rut Meyersson from RISE; Tobias Luthe and a forthcoming PhD student from ETH Zürich; and John Piccolo from Karlstad University.