Future Trends · An emerging research hypothesis
Regenerative Value
What comes after resilience?
Our current research finds that B2B customers increasingly value suppliers that strengthen the resilience of their systems. This raises the next research question: if the resilience of a company ultimately depends on the health of the social and ecological systems around it, will the boundary of B2B value eventually expand again?
We call this emerging possibility Regenerative Value: value that strengthens not only the customer’s system, but the wider systems on which customer and supplier both depend.
⚠️ This is a research hypothesis — not an established buying norm.
Start from what we know
From Systemic Value to Regenerative Value
Future Trends does not start from a new idea. It starts from the boundary of the current finding — and asks whether that boundary will move again.
Systemic Value
Improve the performance and resilience of the customer’s wider system — across the financial, continuity, strategic, workforce and planetary dimensions.
Regenerative Value
Could value eventually include strengthening the social and ecological systems the customer depends on?
The motivation
Why this question is emerging
Companies do not operate independently of the systems around them. Their resilience depends on energy, resources, ecosystems, communities, skills, infrastructure and stable societies.
Our review of major global shocks illustrates increasing interaction between geopolitical disruption and climate and wider ecological pressures, particularly where access to energy, food, water and natural resources becomes strategically contested.
Planetary Boundaries research provides a second reason to investigate the question: several Earth-system processes on which economic activity ultimately depends are already under significant pressure.
The ambition ladder
From extractive to regenerative
1. Extractive
Do harm
Take value from natural or social systems without restoring their capacity.
2. Sustainable
Do less harm
Reduce negative impact and improve efficiency.
3. Circular
Do no harm
Retain resources in use and close material loops.
4. Regenerative
Do good
Create measurable net-positive contribution to ecological and social systems.
The ladder does not claim that every market will progress neatly through four stages. It describes increasing ambition in how organisations relate to the systems from which they derive value.
The definition, tested
What would make value genuinely regenerative?
A proposition should not be called regenerative simply because it has positive environmental or social effects. The research applies one test:
Which system becomes healthier?
Ecological, social, community, workforce, value-chain?
For whom?
Who actually benefits — and who bears the cost?
Over what period?
Is the improvement durable rather than temporary?
Because of what mechanism?
Can the contribution be causally connected to the proposition — and measured?
Testing the idea, not advocating it
The commercial reality
Most B2B customers today do not pay a standalone premium simply because an offer is labelled regenerative.
Cost pressure remains high. Sustainability is often driven by compliance, risk reduction or customer requirements. Measurement remains difficult. “Regenerative” itself remains conceptually ambiguous.
The selling implications
If the hypothesis proves true, Value Engineering would expand again
No new sales methodology is needed. Regenerative Value would expand what Value Engineering is asked to engineer.
Value Design
Expand the system boundary beyond the customer.
Value Selling
Build business cases incorporating material social and ecological effects where relevant.
Value Realisation
Measure whether the wider system actually improves.
Value Capture
Examine how value and cost are distributed among customer, supplier and wider stakeholders.
Early signals — not proof
Two signals, read as tests of the definition
Emerging fields rarely arrive as finished models. They first appear as incomplete patterns — useful precisely because they show which pieces of a regenerative proposition exist today and which are still to be invented.
SunIsUp — a local energy community
Signal
Local production, participation and value distribution increase decentralised resilience — producers receive a better rate, consumers pay less, and value stays in the community.
Why it is interesting
The regenerative element is less the product (solar power) than the redesigned architecture of value flows between participants.
Still missing
Evidence of systematic ecological restoration or deliberate social repair.
CIRCL — redesigning house-building
Signal
Circular design — timber, bio-based insulation, recycled materials, factory-controlled prefabrication — reduces material use, waste and disruption.
Why it is interesting
It demonstrates a credible pathway to transform one of the highest-impact sectors there is.
Still missing
Evidence of measurable net-positive biodiversity, water or community outcomes.
What would prove — or disprove — the hypothesis?
What we are now testing
Materiality
When does regenerative contribution enter an actual B2B buying decision?
Monetisation
Under what circumstances will customers pay for it?
Measurement
Can net-positive contribution be credibly attributed and measured?
Governance
Who bears the investment, risk and accountability?
Boundary conditions
In which sectors does the hypothesis hold — and where does it not?
Evidence of contradiction
Are there markets where increasing external instability produces greater short-term extraction rather than regeneration?
The last question matters most: the programme is prepared for the hypothesis to be wrong — or to hold only under specific conditions.
Help us test Regenerative Value
We are looking for organisations, customers, researchers and practitioners who can provide evidence that supports, challenges or contradicts this hypothesis.