Transformational Change: Business inspired by nature - Schumacher College Course

Course Leaders: Andy Middleton, Belina Raffy, Denise DeLuca

The natural world is telling us that we have to radically change how we do business if we are not to pay a high price for ignoring limits to resources, ecosystems, resilience and biodiversity. Despite the scale of challenge, there’s increasing evidence that nature itself can provide the inspiration for sustainable business through exploration of processes and relationships as well as the well-accepted ideas of nature-inspired product design. This programme asks: “How can we most effectively reflect and learn from nature to manage complexity and rapid change in our business model?”

The scale of shift needed to align business and government with low carbon living on only one planet’s worth of resources requires the majority of leaders and managers to find space and rethink the way that they sense, plan, act and learn. To do this, they’ll need new skills and insights. Organisations ahead of the curve will adapt the way they develop their people, relationships, processes and products towards a business model that adapts, thrives and creates, rather than exploits value.

On this programme, 20 people from business and change organisations will work collaboratively on developing a template for change that they can take back to their organisations to catalyse transformational thought, innovation and action.

Details

The course leaders will help participants develop tools for their own organisations and clients by learning from success and failures from leading companies and NGOs, group discussions, direct experience of nature, biomimicry, and experiential learning techniques. Participants will explore how to embed change within their organisation in a meaningful and transformational way, using a design-based approach that focuses on building value through natural, human and financial capital.

Participants will be asked to bring examples of challenge and opportunity from their own workplace and discuss these with other colleagues to optimise the sharing and spread of good practice. Schumacher College has a long history of providing transformative education that enables participants to understand the complex interdependencies of the modern world and to feel empowered to initiate change within their own workplace or community. Learning and peer discussion within this context will enable participants to develop practical approaches to change for their own organisations.

Participants will come away from the course with:

• An understanding of how nature can inform business and organisational practice
• New approaches to systems thinking
• A sense of vision and inspiration
• An understanding of successful approaches to sustainable value creation, and practical tools for its application to their own business environment
• Inspirational case studies of business models and technologies inspired by nature

Who is this course for?

Leaders in business, civil society or government.
Directors and senior managers who understand the need for transformation
Professionals who know that defining challenges of our generation – from climate change to inequality – are also unique opportunities for the creation of new value, new markets and new economies.
Open-minded thinkers who are looking for a place to explore opportunities, co-create solutions and learn from the experience of others.

Course Leaders

Andy Middleton: Founder Director of The TYF Group, an adventure learning and sustainability education business
Belina Raffy: Director of Maffick, Ltd., business and change specialist
Denise DeLuca: Partner, Biomimicry for Creative Innovation and professional engineer

Business, Leadership and network based learning

Running under the business and leadership series at Schumacher College, this course is designed for a maximum of 20 participants, the course will bring you into contact with like-minded people from all sectors of business and society. It will immerse you in real-life case studies of sustainable value creation and allow you to share and develop entrepreneurial solutions to the challenges and opportunities in your own enterprise. The outcomes from this course will provide the basis for developing future network-based learning, a new Future Leaders & Shapers Programme, and further collaboration to ‘make real change happen’. Participants are therefore invited to be the first in these new areas of work and contribute to the course with future learning potential in mind.

Fees

In order to launch a new area of work we are running this course at reduced fees of £600 (inclusive of accommodation, food and all sessions)