From intent to action: the regenerative pivot

The regenerative transition requires moving beyond short-term performance management towards a systemic vision. Here are six steps to get the ball rolling—without claiming to solve everything.

Based on, among others

Jacques Tassin, Vivre la Forêt (2025), Carol Sanford, The Regenerative Business (2017), Daniel Wahl, Designing Regenerative Cultures (2016), Rapport Shift Project (2022), Kate Raworth, Doughnut Economics (2017).

1 – Go back to your company’s core function

Pivot question: What are you fundamentally meant to contribute to life? Too many companies define their purpose by their product (we sell clothing), their market (we are in retail), or their performance (we generate returns). A regenerative company doesn’t define itself by what it extracts or sells; it defines itself by what it regenerates, supports, or enables.

Run an immersive strategy workshop with your executive team and a few external stakeholders (life scientist, farmer, frontline employee, younger voice). Ask this unfiltered question: “If we disappeared tomorrow, what would the living world—human and non-human—truly lose?”
Then craft a collective reformulation of your living contribution: which systems do we actively want to restore to health? Soil? Dignity? Food autonomy? Territorial cohesion?

Suggested tool: Business Contribution Canvas (inspired by the “raison d’être,” extended to the living world)

Don’t leave with a slogan—leave with a compass.

Published by Françoise Tollet

She spent 12 years in industry, working for Bolloré Technologies, among others. She co-founded Business Digest in 1992 and has been running the company since 1998. And she took the Internet plunge in 1996, even before coming on board as part of the BD team. 

From intent to action: the regenerative pivot

1 – Go back to your company’s core function

Optimized to the limit. What next? Learning from forests to regenerate.

Ready to move from “less bad” to regenerative?

Stop checking boxes. Start repairing.