SUMMIT OVERVIEW
The Thinkers 50 London Summit (3-4 November 2025) centered on the theme of “Regeneration,” exploring fundamental questions contemporary organizations face: What is a regenerative organization? How do we drive regenerative growth? What does it mean to be a regenerative leader? The summit brought together leading management thinkers, business leaders, and academics to examine how businesses can move beyond sustainability and net zero to create net positive impact and give back more than they take.
What is a regenerative business?
Regenerative business recognizes that long-term success is inextricably linked to the health of the social and ecological systems in which it operates. Rather than focusing solely on growth, regenerative businesses aim to restore, renew, and enrich, leaving their ecological, social, and economic environments healthier and more resilient than they found them.
At its core, regenerative business shifts the question from “How can we succeed?” to “How can we help the whole system thrive?” This represents the next evolution of conscious business: moving from minimizing harm to maximizing positive impact.
The scientific foundations of regenerative leadership
Recent research positions regenerative leadership within established scientific frameworks, building on decades of leadership studies while extending the scope of organizational impact. Jeffrey Hull and Margaret Moore in “The Science of Leadership” (2025) identify nine evidence-based leadership capacities (conscious, authentic, agile, relational, positive, compassionate, shared, servant, and transformational) as foundational, but argue these alone are insufficient given planetary degradation. The regenerative leadership integrates the nine capacities with an additional domain – a continuous respectful engagement with nature and life.
Two key scientific frameworks underpin regenerative approaches:
Grounded Systems Theory examines how parts of a system interact with one another and the whole. The Human-Technical-Environmental (HTE) systems framework has been successfully applied to sustainability challenges, including evaluating mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants, helping analysts design interventions that reduce environmental impact while considering human and technical dimensions.
Living Systems Theory, developed by James Grier Miller in the 1970s, explains how systems at various organizational levels, from cells to societies, function and interact. One notable application successfully reinvented wastewater treatment in British Columbia. A Bill Reed and Regenesis project used a “think big” approach to reframe work from a utility focus to saving orcas and regenerating an ecosystem.
For organizations and leaders seeking to adopt regenerative practices, the research presented by Hull and Moore suggests beginning with three fundamental shifts:
Consciousness: Shift perspective to see clearly how we are embedded within systems that include other humans and nature. This requires tracking and quieting “ego noise” to act with humility rather than ego-centricity.
Compassion: Reflect on the downstream impacts of decisions, acting with deeper resonance with self, others, and the planet. This moves beyond stakeholder analysis to genuine systems thinking.
Co-evolution: From a space of courage, creativity, and vision, make decisions in alignment with the natural systems in which we are embedded. This represents transformational leadership extended to a planetary scale.
Implications for research and practice
The emergence of regenerative business as a central theme at Thinkers 50 signals a significant shift in management thinking. For academics, this presents opportunities to:
- Investigate the effectiveness of regenerative business models
- Explore the tension between entrenched financial models and regenerative infrastructures
- Examine how organizations develop “regenerative capacity” and what barriers exist
- Study the relationship between the nine leadership capacities and regenerative outcomes
- Develop pedagogical approaches to cultivate regenerative mindsets in education
The movement from CSR to sustainability to regeneration represents an evolution in how we conceptualize business’s role in society. It represents a path to realign organizations with the social and ecological systems upon which they depend. Built on rigorous scientific foundations and demonstrated through practical application, regenerative leadership offers a framework for moving beyond harm reduction to system enhancement.
