Current approaches to innovation tend to be based on rewarding decision making based on speculative investment strategies that do not take into account the negative externalities of the innovation. This has led to overconsumption and resource usage that undermines the planet’s ability to support life in the long term, and the ability for societies to flourish. Global income inequality, the gap in women’s empowerment, increase of global pollution, reliance on fossil fuel-based energy, and food systems that use too much water have resulted in the degradation of our planet past life-sustaining and safe-operating zones of the planet.

Much work is underway to improve long term sustainability and ethical decision making in small and medium sized business like the circular economy movement, and the rise of regenerative economics. But how can we embed these longer-term movements into sustainability and ethical decision making today? In this paper I propose a set of principles for Regenerative Innovation to use as guideposts when approaching innovation projects to improve sustainability, and ethical decision-making that can support innovation that considers holistic impacts of the innovation and supports sustainability efforts and long-term human flourishing.