The Promise of Regenerative Innovation
The future can be beautiful, and we want to be a part of building it.
Innovation is supposed to be exciting. Bold. Transformational.
But all too often, the tools we use for innovation today feel stuck in survival mode, focused almost exclusively on risk, reduction and marginal improvements.
At Carom though, we believe in something deeper:
What if innovation could become a source of hope again? What if solving the planet’s biggest challenges could also lead us toward better jobs, stronger communities, joyful work and a healthier relationship with life?
To get there however, we need a new kind of framework.
Moving Beyond Sustainability’s Ceiling
Much of today’s sustainability work focuses on doing less harm by focusing on things like lower emissions, less waste, fewer toxins, smaller footprints.
But that mindset, while absolutely necessary, just isn’t sufficient. It’s based on minimizing damage, not maximizing possibility. And it often keeps us locked into the same systems that caused the harm in the first place.
What if, instead of trying to make broken systems slightly better, we imagined entirely different systems? Ones that heal, connect and regenerate?
That’s the world regenerative innovation invites us into.
A Framework That Begins With Life
Carom’s regenerative innovation framework starts with a simple shift in question. It’s no longer “how do we fix this?”, but instead:
“What would it look like to design businesses that actually improve life for humans and beyond?”
We identified six core planetary needs that every life depends on:
Habitat & Living Systems
Food, Water & Nutrient Cycles
Climate & Energy Balance
Biodiversity, Health & Resilience
Knowledge, Innovation & Evolution
Human and More-Than-Human Beings
This last category matters more than it might seem. It reminds us that regeneration isn’t just a technical or ecological challenge, it’s also about relationships between people, between species, between generations. It asks us to see ourselves not as separate, but as participants in a living web where every decision we make ripples outward to affect other beings.
What It Means in Practice
Let’s say you’re part of a regional housing developer. Traditional approaches might measure success in units built and costs reduced. Meanwhile, adopting a regenerative lens might lead you to ask:
Can this development increase biodiversity and create cooling microclimates?
Can it reconnect neighbors with native ecosystems and food systems?
Can it create long-term jobs in stewardship, green infrastructure and ecological education?
And crucially, can it restore people’s sense of kinship with land, place and one another?
Suddenly, this isn’t just about minimizing impact. It’s about creating new forms of value. Things like having healthier families, meaningful work, stronger place-based economies and a deeper sense of belonging.
The Jobs and Joys of a Regenerative Economy
A regenerative future isn’t just “less bad”. It’s radically more alive. It means:
Jobs that heal: land stewards, ecosystem designers, bioregional planners, circular economy builders.
Communities that thrive: where wellbeing, education and local food systems are reconnected.
Businesses that inspire: not through extraction or efficiency alone, but by growing life in all its forms.
Regenerative innovation is a redefinition of prosperity. It’s one that includes joy, connection and long-term health - not just for people, but for all living systems we depend on, and live among.
This Is Why We Built the Framework
We want to help innovators, designers, entrepreneurs, leaders, really everyone, find their place in creating this better story. We want to offer practical tools and new patterns of thought. And we want to demonstrate that addressing planetary challenges isn’t just a necessity. It can be the most hopeful, creative and meaningful work of our time. It should be.
The world we want is still possible.
Let’s design like it.