Enrolments Open for 2024 Regenerative Business Development Journey
An act of rebellion or empowerment?
Up until recently it was considered an act of rebellion to pursue tourism as if nature, people, and communities mattered. Even today, it is still considered a radical step to acknowledge that the planet is finite, and that we are currently in the grip of a meta-crisis. The inner sense that transformational change is required in all aspect of our economic and social lives seems too hard or too big, so we suppress the urge to shift direction.
To speak out, and voice what we know instinctively, is to risk marginalisation. To speak out makes us vulnerable. But an increasing number of people are speaking out about what they instinctively feel and know to be true through science, and the business-as-usual world they work in.
So if you are one of those people inclined to acknowledge the trouble we are in, the good news is that there are a growing number of people working for a different and regenerative future. Connecting, collaborating and learning together is where hope and inspiration can be found.
The rise of grassroots innovation
The momentum is building for change and it’s happening from the ground up. This momentum is coming from individuals wanting to take the plunge, create their desired future, and to demonstrate that change is possible. They are starting their own businesses, acting as intrapreneurs within existing businesses, and playing with traditional business models such as social enterprise to design and deliver on a purpose that is more than simply economic gain. Some have simply followed their heart and have nurtured regenerative businesses without knowing it. Change is also being driven from those who are building local collectives and growing social movements within local communities and who are interested in leveraging the visitor economy for local benefit.
Put simply, individuals are activating their own agency and are self-organising, drawn to others with whom they share similar values and interests. This momentum is challenging old systems and processes, however policy support for this movement of ground-up grass roots innovation have not yet emerged. Business development and incubator programs that adopt the mass production route often struggle to offer place-based grassroots innovators a pathway. Yet tourism is place based, and requires community input and social license to bring out the best of local places.
Innovation in regenerative business models
The question is how can we scale regenerative tourism businesses and support grassroots place-based innovation? The answer lies in letting go of old assumptions and redesigning tourism business from a regenerative perspective. It starts with asking questions like:
What does success look like for this place, for me, my business or organisation, and for the future?
What value do we want to create?
Who are the customers we want?
Who are the beneficiaries of the value we create?
How can we think less about impact and more about contribution?
How do we measure and communicate that contribution?
Underpinning these questions is a paradigm shift in many small and medium sized tourism businesses. There is growing awareness that individuals and groups have choices and all have levers of change at their disposal to change the way business is done. Change happens when we explore and activate these opportunities, and when we activate together, that momentum grows.
In other words, it is no longer enough to wait for technical experts from away to solve complex global-local challenges. There is growing awareness that local knowledge and lived experience are important ingredients in building resilience. Ground up knowledge plays a major role in grass roots innovation, and in tourism this is an important element when differentiating places (destinations).
Scaling regeneration business development through learning
Rethinking scaling
The inability to scale regenerative development, or that it only applies to small, regional and remote destinations is a common criticism against grass roots innovation and regenerative initiatives. For example, a common criticism thrown at regeneration is that it is not scalable, and it cannot be applied to complex industrial systems like tourism. (Just look at the Hawaiian Regenerative Tourism Law (2024) to counter that argument!) The problem with this thinking is the underpinning assumption: that solutions should be able to be mass produced and applied efficiently and effectively everywhere at low cost.
Mass produced products and services scaled globally have led to a situation where destinations, especially those dominated by global chains, start to look the same. But complex places are characterised by complex webs of social, economic and environmental relationships. They require complex solutions that take into account local contexts, lived experience and local knowledge.
Complex problems require complex context dependent solutions
Mass produced solutions rarely take into account local circumstance and knowledge, and they rarely incorporate genuine local capacity building. But what might happen if we thought about scaling as a series of local grass-roots initiatives, experiments, and actions designed to build local capacity while also addressing global challenges?
Imagine if the way to scale was found not in the instrument, template, or the solution, but in the capacity of places to learn, adapt and experiment in locally relevant yet globally connected ways? Here, new and existing tourism SMEs can play such an important role!
Empowering local tourism business innovation towards regeneration
What if small and medium sized enterprises (which make up anywhere up to 90-100% of the tourism sector in many locations) were empowered to co-design and activate local actions that address, for example, climate change, circular economy, energy transition, economic change, and environmental restoration all while delivering place-based products, services and experiences? What if they could harness local ingenuity, knowledge and experience, creating meaningful local jobs and a stronger sense of place identity? A vibrant, flourishing community is also great place to visit! It’s also the pathway to tourism’s social license.
Imagine the confidence and strength gained and the resilience built from sharing and learning from each other. By reflecting, learning and collaborating, scaling becomes an adaptive, emergent process. Fit-for-purpose at the local level, and yet able to be used and adapted in other locations the shift towards regeneration happens in co-learning, sharing and capacity building. In this approach to scaling, innovation happens in collaborative learning networks and in flows of energy, information and resources.
In this way, grassroots innovation scales in a very different way to mass production. Broadly, it involves:
Nurturing the soil - decomposition of old ideas, questioning, unlearning, nurturing new life, new leadership, new ideas. It’s a process through which new ideas and actions emerge.
Learning - reflecting, and creating new ideas and ways of working for the next generation businesses, projects, and initiatives.
Experimenting - adapting and collaborating in a way that new energy, information and resources are fed into reinvigorating the new system.
Giving generously - sharing of wins and learning from failure, holding space for collectively emerging into a new space of innovation.
Scaling through learning, collaboration and adaptation
In this perspective, scaling is made possible by learning, innovation and collaboration, not by producing the same solution over and over again regardless of the context. The implications of this reframing of ‘scaling’ is that, instead of a focus on rolling out the mass production of standard tools and frameworks, we should be scaling learning, collaboration and building capacity. Bring in and learn from individuals, groups, and communities who have the local knowledge and lived experience and who can develop and implement effective place-based and community-led strategies.
Some tourism organisations have even been transitioning towards this local capacity building approach, including the Hawaiian Tourism Authority, 4VI (Vancouver Island), and others like Flinders Island, Tasmania have established community collective, the Furneaux Collective, to take on this role.
The Tourism CoLab Approach
The Tourism CoLab has been working to scale regenerative approaches since 2019. Our belief is that the capacity to scale does not rest in a template, a framework or a solution, but in building the capacity of all actors - businesses, communities and governments - to learn, experiment and share learnings in collaboration.
Our ambition is to create learning communities, and a community of communities, that empowers individual and collective agency and innovation. To this end, we are launching our 2024 deep-dive, a 20-week Regenerative Business Development coaching course and you’re invited on the journey.
Introducing the Regenerative Business Design Journey
In our journey towards creating regenerative businesses, places and communities, one of the most powerful tools at our disposal is the practice of unlearning. Unlearning involves challenging our deeply ingrained assumptions, questioning the status quo, and opening ourselves up to new ways of thinking. As with any living system it’s important to compost the old material, turn the soil over, and allow the microbial activity (small ideas and conversations) to enrich the soil. New life and energy emerges. Sharing insights and reflections are key. One of the remarkable features of The Tourism Colab approach is that it offers a global learning environment where the collective experience and knowledge from across the world can be shared, and learning deepens.
Our ambition in our deep dive coaching format is to make regenerative thinking and working accessible and practical regardless of whether you represent business, government or community. Our contribution to scaling the change is through nurturing a creative and collaborative learning environment where participants co-learn, reflect and share their grass roots innovation journey.
Designing regenerative business for better tourism
The Regenerative Business Journey is based on 10 modules over a 20 week period, and we try to cap enrolments in order to nurture the best learning environment. The journey follows the pathway below:
The Regenerative Business Development Journey is a group coaching journey with a global cohort of grass roots innovators wishing to apply regenerative principles to their existing or new business, organisation or community planning. By undertaking the course, you will design your own regenerative road map and benefit from the collective wisdom of your global cohort. What a journey!
Starts: 29 August 2024
Cost: $1490 (AUD, excl. GST)
Enrolments close: 22 August 2024
Duration: 20 weeks The Schedule
Or… submit an Expression of Interest and we will contact you
Benefits You Can Expect From The Journey
🤍 A journey with experienced and knowledgeable regenerative practitioners with decades of project and leadership experience in local and global communities.
🤍 Access to a global network of people working in regenerative practice, tourism, place-making, community development and regenerative business design via the CoLab Communiversity.
🤍 Co-learning, reflection and connection. Everyone brings with them the full sum of their lived experience and knowledge, and we make space for collective sharing and learning.
🤍 Access to a wide range of tools, workbooks, case studies and examples.
🤍 Experience what a regenerative way of working and regenerative systems change entails. Learning, being and doing together makes us stronger.
🤍 A certificate of completion and, more importantly, connection into a global community and network of change makers.
The Tourism CoLab is an online tourism education and change-making agency specialising in regenerative development and tourism. We work with businesses, community groups, governments and NGOs to help transition tourism for a future that will look very different to the present. We specialise in complex systems thinking and practical. actions, creating learning spaces, and leadership. We are also globally connected through our work co-ordinating the Local 2030 Island Network’s Regenerative and Sustainable Tourism Community of Practice.