In the past decades, the way we have conducted business has pushed our planet, the Earth, to the brink of its capacity. The human-induced climate catastrophe is already in full swing. Life on our planet is becoming increasingly uncomfortable, exacerbating the social injustice of our globalized world.
It is clear to an overwhelming majority of our society that we need to take action. Yet, there is still far too little movement. Why is that? What paralyzes us? What is needed for economic actors to find the courage to roll up their sleeves and shape the change?
Since we began exploring sustainable and regenerative business models, we've noticed that even defining the "what" — as in "What do we want to achieve? What is our goal?" — is a paralyzing hurdle for many. And for good reason: we don't know what the future holds. Combating climate change involves tasks and transformations that humanity has never faced before. We're navigating into an entirely uncertain time.
Yet, we frequently encounter organizations that are already embodying an economic practice driven by tireless pioneering spirit, providing not only inspiration but also guidance and valuable lessons.
With our InterStellar Learning Journey, we bring together individuals pursuing economic transformation for themselves and their organizations on a three-day virtual trip. This journey offers the opportunity to meet organizations and actors who are already advancing the change today.
One of the participants in the last InterStellar Learning Journey was Svenja Weingärtner, Corporate Development Manager at Digitas Pixelpark, where her focus lies on strategic internal organizational development and employee experience.
Like many people, she often feels a gap between what she would like to do for our planet and what is pragmatically feasible in corporate everyday life. Although she is witnessing and helping to shape the shift towards sustainability in her work environment, she believes that the larger vision is missing. In the network to which the agency belongs, this topic needs to be holistically integrated so that all set goals can be achieved in the next 5-10 years.
“How do regenerative business practices look? What do organizations pursuing holistic business models look like? What obstacles do they encounter? What principles do they follow? And what can I do to tackle such a significant challenge within my personal sphere of influence?”
The InterStellar Learning Journey is designed to provide answers to these exact questions and connect participants with people who can support them in tackling this challenge.
Many astronauts who have had the chance to see Earth as a whole report a kind of shift in consciousness and perspective after their space missions. Our planet is perceived as a tiny, fragile ball moving through a black void, unprotected and yet embodying everything that constitutes our life support. On our journey, we aim to adopt exactly this perspective and will fly into space with the participants.
We will take off together and dedicate the first day to the first two of our four regenerative principles "embeddedness and inclusivity". Our goal is – beware, this might sound strange at first – to allow the participants to feel the magnitude of the task ahead and the associated emotions like humility and hopelessness. But there's a purpose to this: In the spirit of Theory U, we create, through the shared experience of the urgency of our collective predicament, a space where the new can later emerge. For regenerative thinking requires us to unlearn what we have learned and recognize our inner resistances to open ourselves up.
"The evening of the first day can be described in one word: Weltschmerz. We all now understand together that we cannot continue as we have been. Nevertheless – or perhaps because of this – I was all the more curious to explore the possibilities of transforming my despair into constructive action."
On the second day, it goes without saying that we must counteract the hopelessness: we now float in the weightless space of solutions. The focus of this day is on the principle of circularity, which we collectively explore, experiment with, and experience through expert inputs, exercises, and discussions. Our thirst for knowledge is gradually satisfied, and the space for innovation opens up wide.
The third and final day brings us back to Earth, where we dedicate ourselves to the principle of long-term thinking and the concretization of future scenarios. Together, we look forward to what may come. By the end of this journey, hope has returned, even stronger than before, as participants are enriched with diverse inspirations, concrete solutions, allies, self-confidence, and a drive to take action.
"The learning journey has sparked hope and constructiveness within me, and has clearly shown me that my sphere of influence can be much larger than I previously thought. Since then, the four principles of regenerative economics have become integrated into my daily thinking and actions. I have learned that even with relatively small impulses and insights, I can make a significant difference."
We offer the InterStellar Learning Journey in both open format and as an in-house option for teams and organizations.
At TheDive, we constantly create new things.
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