Regenerative Business Beyond Growth: Rethinking Value, Sufficiency & the Future of Business

What would it take for business to move beyond extraction, overconsumption, and the pursuit of endless growth? In this session from NENA's Post-Growth Futures Week, regenerative business strategist Rachel Bevans explores how medium and large businesses can begin transitioning towards models that create long-term value for people, communities, and the living world. Drawing on decades of experience working with organisations, Rachel shares the emerging framework behind the Regenerative Business Collective and outlines how businesses can move beyond traditional sustainability approaches towards genuinely restorative and regenerative ways of operating. Topics explored include: 🌱 Why infinite growth and overconsumption are creating social and ecological crises 🌱 The limitations of net zero and risk-based sustainability approaches 🌱 Regeneration and sufficiency as complementary principles for business transformation 🌱 Why medium and large businesses remain critical leverage points for systems change 🌱 The difference between creating value and simply increasing volume 🌱 How businesses can meet real human needs rather than manufacturing wants 🌱 The role of marketing, innovation, and leadership in shifting economic narratives 🌱 Opportunities and challenges for cooperatives, stakeholder governance, and alternative ownership models 🌱 The relationship between business transformation, government regulation, and broader economic change The discussion also explores difficult questions around inequality, consumer culture, corporate power, greenwashing, Indigenous knowledge systems, and whether meaningful transformation can occur within existing economic structures. Rather than treating business as separate from social and ecological wellbeing, this conversation asks what it might look like for organisations to become active contributors to community resilience, ecological restoration, and shared prosperity. This session was presented as part of NENA's Post-Growth Futures Week 2026:    • Growing Deeper, Not Up: Localisation, Tran...   The New Economy Network Australia (NENA) is a member-led cooperative supporting collaboration, learning, and action towards a just, regenerative, and sustainable economy. 🌏 Learn more about NENA: http://neweconomy.org.au/ 🌱 Join the NENAsphere community: https://neweconomy.mn.co/ 📺 Subscribe for more conversations exploring economic transformation, systems change, localisation, wellbeing economies, cooperatives, community resilience, and regenerative futures. #RegenerativeBusiness #PostGrowth #Degrowth #NewEconomy #SystemsChange #Sufficiency #RegenerativeEconomics #Sustainability #NENA