The Regeneration Lab

Mirjam sees herself as an incubator preparing caterpillars to become butterflies—holding a safe space where transformation can happen before students are ready to fly. Having grown up close to nature, she's evolved from human-centered design to planet-and-human-centered approaches, and she's not afraid to challenge conventional tools. When the Business Model Canvas wasn't enough, she and her colleagues created the Value Creation Canvas. But perhaps most radically, Mirjam forces her students to include an additional stakeholder in every project: the planet itself. What are the planet's jobs to be done? What are its pains and gains? In this episode, we explore what it means to call students "preneurs"—leaving space for entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, and commonpreneurs alike—and why having fun as an educator matters just as much as transformation.

Key themes: Planet as stakeholder, transformation as metaphor, value creation canvas, preneurship, safe space for chang

Trudie's journey from humanitarian aid to entrepreneurship education was shaped by witnessing the limits of well-meaning interventions and the dangerous lack of systems thinking in development work. Fear for her children's future drove her to completely reimagine how she teaches - and biomimicry became the key. "When I started looking at entrepreneurial learning through the lens of nature, it really changed how I saw myself as an educator," she explains. Now her classroom is a living lab for regenerative thinking, where students use natural materials for prototypes, walk through parks for ecological awareness, and sometimes even write poetry after being among trees. As a fellow traveler on a forest path that changes with every season, Trudie emphasizes that teaching regeneration must begin with care - care for the planet, for learners, for ourselves, and for all the systems we're trying to change.

Key themes: Biomimicry, nature-based learning, sensory pedagogy, care as foundation, living lab classroom

"It is important not to jump straight into solutions but staying in the uncomfortable, not knowing, having to listen, understanding better, do it all over again - staying in the zone of discomfort," Ilona explains. As the guardian of winds who supports students to find their way of flying, Ilona understands that transformation requires unlearning before relearning - and unlearning means frustration, confusion, and irritation. Rather than protecting students from these feelings, Ilona creates spaces where they work together for entire days, going through the frustration in the room together. Having gone through her own studies feeling like something was missing - especially in business administration where "there was only one way of looking at things" - Ilona now emphasizes that innovation starts at the individual level, not just at the entrepreneurial society level. She's developed regenerative business model canvases that include stakeholders who don't benefit from the system, and she uses life-centered design thinking approaches that go beyond human users. For Ilona, regeneration is fundamentally "a way of thinking that leads to new ways of doing," and that thinking requires the courage to stay with not-knowing while discovering potential together with everyone in the room through deep listening.

Key themes: Staying with discomfort, unlearning and relearning, listening as tool, life-centered design, including marginalized stakeholders, regeneration as thinking, individual transformation

Rob's research in Malawi on material arrangements and entrepreneurial behavior led to a profound insight: it's not just entrepreneurs who have agency—the everyday materials and systems around us shape what's possible. Using the metaphor of a football coach with a new team every year, Rob describes the challenge of creating learning experiences where students understand systems thinking, recognize their multiple roles in society, and most importantly, shift from asking "what's in it for me?" to "what am I contributing?" This episode explores how Rob uses the Doughnut Economics model, biomimicry sensory experiences, and work with practice partners to help students see that regeneration isn't just about agriculture—it's about fundamentally changing our relationship with all actants, human and non-human alike.

Key themes: Distributed agency, systems thinking, material arrangements, Doughnut Economics, shifting from extraction to contribution

Bruno's metaphor of the chef supporting apprentices to find their unique expression captures his belief that education is fundamentally about connection and craft. But what makes Bruno's approach distinctive is his willingness to be vulnerable. "An educator wins a lot if he is able to be vulnerable towards students, so they see there's a human being in front of them," he shares. Having moved from Silicon Valley-style entrepreneurship—where the social-ecological dimension wasn't even on his radar—to regenerative education, Bruno emphasizes that courage doesn't mean the absence of fear. "We can be fearful and courageous at the same time." In this episode, we explore how personal loss transformed what Bruno sees as important beyond business, why he believes embodied learning and play matter, and how his regenerative business model canvas injects regeneration into tools that were originally designed for extraction.

Key themes: Vulnerability as practice, courage and fear, personal transformation, embodied learning, regenerative tools

Charles uses the metaphor of animal tracking—where many different paths lead to the same animal, and complexity increases the more you zoom out—to describe the intricate work of regenerative entrepreneurship education. Inspired by witnessing value-based entrepreneurship in Africa, where money wasn't the first priority, Charles challenges the mechanistic worldview dominant in the West and instead emphasizes living systems thinking and interconnectedness. "Regeneration is about finding your potential after unpacking the complexity of entrepreneurship and understanding the world's problems," Charles explains. In this episode, we explore why regeneration means going outside, why having the same vocabulary is essential before we can move forward together, and why Charles believes that entrepreneurship—with an entrepreneurial, critical, and regenerative mindset—is the tool to put a paradigm shift into action. Change means taking risks, being curious, and staying uncomfortable.

Key themes: Living systems thinking, complexity, ecological literacy, going outside, paradigm shift, value-based work

While mainstream entrepreneurship is about acceleration, innovation, and speed, Sergia offers a radically different metaphor: compost—slow, natural growth through decomposition and regeneration. Growing up connected to the land and sea in Galicia, Sergia brings a deeply place-based perspective to education, emphasizing that we must be "in, for, and of" our local contexts. Through nature walks, eco-social sewing (a form of community communication), and visits to local businesses that don't appear in textbooks, Sergia creates spaces for students to understand entrepreneurship beyond startup culture—as stewardship. But this work is hard, and Sergia doesn't shy away from naming educator burnout and the need for institutional bravery. "We should be weaving academic networks that really start from caring for others and being aware that you are not alone," Sergia reminds us, calling for courage, community, and the patience to let regeneration unfold at nature's pace.

Key themes: Slow growth, place-based learning, eco-social methods, stewardship, educator networks, institutional courage

"We don't start-up businesses, we start-up people," Yvette declares, capturing her fundamental reframing of entrepreneurship education. For her, uncertainty isn't something to fear—it's a source of hope and inspiration. Yvette's teaching is centered on helping students learn to embrace and navigate uncertainty, understanding that collaboration and diverse teams are essential for addressing the complexity of sustainability and regeneration. She emphasizes that students need to take ownership of their own learning journey, working on real-world assignments based on effectuation principles—focusing on what they can control. In this conversation, Yvette explores why she finds more meaning in students' reflections than their final products, and how she's rethinking assessment and grading to better serve regenerative education.

Key themes: Starting-up people, uncertainty as hope, student ownership, effectuation, team collaboration, assessment innovation

Catherine doesn't see the classroom as a space for delivering content - she sees it as a relational field where she's deeply interested in what's happening between people. Driven by a strong sense of justice and what she describes as an "obsession with inequality and unsustainability," Catherine's teaching journey took a decisive turn in 2021 when the IPCC's "Code Red for Humanity" report made continuing with business-as-usual education not just difficult, but impossible. In this episode, Catherine shares how she practices compassionate pedagogy - drawing from an interest in uncompetitive, cooperative learning interactions - and why she invests so much energy in learning students' names and understanding their realities. From exploring democratic ownership structures like steward ownership and cooperatives to insisting that we constantly question our assumptions, Catherine demonstrates what it means to build education on relationships, critical thinking, and hope in the face of climate breakdown.

Key themes: Relational pedagogy, compassionate teaching, justice orientation, questioning assumptions, democratic ownership

Sebastian opens with a bold pedagogical move: meditation on the floor, shoes off, in the middle of an entrepreneurship class. As someone who deliberately challenges himself to push students out of their comfort zones -even when it makes him feel insecure - Sebastian believes that discomfort, resistance, and friction are not problems to be solved but energy to be harnessed. Using the kite runner metaphor, Sebastian describes entrepreneurship as learning to work with winds you cannot predict or control. This episode takes us through speculative design workshops, uncomfortable embodied exercises, and mountain retreats where Sebastian creates what he calls "comfortable uncertainty" - a space where students feel seen as humans while simultaneously being stretched beyond their limits.

Key themes: Productive discomfort, embodied learning, speculative design, working with uncertainty, self-challenging