FOUNDATIONAL COURSE

Nature’s business playbook

Learn from Nature’s playbook. with life-centered design. for strategy and innovation.

Our Nature’s business playbook course is designed to give you a foundational introduction to re/thinking your business regeneratively.

Not Nature-positive governance. But Nature’s proven design principles.

10 weeks | 10 modules | Live online | 1,000 / 600 USD

KEY CONCEPTS

10 overarching design principles. From Nature’s playbook.

Informed by analysing 100 years of living-systems design research. Curated and calibrated for business strategy, innovation and business models.

Relationships to tension, time, place, information, regulation, materiality, form, structure, self and others. In each module we’ll dive into an aspect to learn the theory, and then with examples and case studies, learn how to apply in practice.

These 10 principles help you navigate the complexity, build adaptive resilience beyond “agile and aimless”, and leverage biological patterns of value potential. For your strategy, innovations and overall business model. These principles are at the core of our t.METHOD™. Together they help build your BQ™ - your biological fitness.

WHO FOR

If you’re looking for how to apply Nature’s design playbook to business, then this course is for you

for Business leaders. for Design Thinkers. for Sustainability practitioners.

This course is for you if you want to:

  • Bring Nature to the design table to learn from Nature’s genius, and shift your thinking from human-centered design to life-centered design.

  • Learn from a Biomimicry practitioner using real case studies, relating to strategy, innovation and business models.

  • Be inspired, and get a dose of hope and positivity

  • Move beyond abstract regenerative concepts, to learn the core components of Nature’s design playbook. TIP: nouns (like “complexity” or “emergence”) or adjectives (like “dynamic”) often define operating conditions that are harder concepts to apply in practice. Go for verbs (like “decentralize” or “diversify”) instead. And pay attention to adverbs - how things are done. The genius is in the how.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

  • discovery-led

    We map your market ecosystem, reshuffling interconnections to reveal disruptive opportunities and risks.

    We unpack market patterns to how the current system has been patterned in.

    This process reveals un-met market needs and untapped value potential.

    It also helps you make better strategic choices on where to play, and reveals levers of market system disruption.

    Cross cutting skills:

    SENSING | Systems thinking. Systems mapping. Levers of systems disruption.

  • discovery-led

    We map your cradle-to-cradle lifecycle to better understand the material impact you and your industry has on the environment.

    Using Value Thinking techniques and deep Life’s principles, we explore where bio-value is being lost or uncaptured, and places of un-tapped bio-value potential.

    This reveals incredible growth opportunities for disrupting industry practice.

    Cross cutting skills:

    SENSING | Value thinking. Value chain thinking. Lifecycle mapping. Ecology + Planetary boundaries.

  • discovery-led

    We identify all your customers / users / stakeholders and, using advanced Design Thinking empathy skills and interviewing techniques, we unpack the real pain-points people have (beyond functional "jobs-to-be-done").

    We then map the needs of your customers, to understand their un-met needs (head / heart / hands), and the tensions of competing needs between different groups.

    This helps you get way better insight and reveal the levers for powerful innovation.

    Cross cutting skills:

    SENSING + SEIZING | Customer Interviewing techniques. Needs mapping. Ethics.

  • discovery

    We map the relationships you have (or want to have) with your customers and unpack lifetime value potentiality.

    Using Developmental Relationship techniques, we explore your network potential.

    This uncovers areas for creating compounding lifetime value, and reveals where you can better scale for growth.

    Cross cutting skills:

    SCALING | Customer lifetime value thinking. Network thinking.

  • distillation

    We distil the insight and value levers revealed from Steps 1-4, to give clarity on your strategic direction and your role in contributing to your world.

    This defines your core purpose and your disruptive regenerative potential. Not as a story of ‘why’, but as a practice of how.

    We lay down the key guiding principles that will strategically steer your business, guide where and how you innovate, and where to invest your tech and people.

    Lastly, we bridge strategy to innovation and lay down the key design challenges that you take into the design innovation phase.

    Cross cutting skills:

    SEIZING | Purpose mapping. Principles in practice mapping.

  • design-led

    We go through a rapid-fire innovation process using biomimicry and life-leveraged design principles to create the products, services and experiences you offer.

    We take the design challenges identified from Step 5, and we undertake desk-top bio-research, to bio-brainstorm solutions.

    With this bio-lens, we then ideate low-fi concepts for prototyping and testing.

    We run this step alongside Step 7, to learn how to create material and energy efficient solutions. This helps you create stronger, more scalable value propositions that can disrupt your world.

    Cross cutting skills:

    SEIZING | Biomimicry design. Systems design. Circular design. Ethics design. Ecology design.

  • design-led

    Running alongside Step 6, we rapid fire explore how you might operationally deliver your value propositions, re/thinking the natural, technical and people resources you might use, as nutrient flows in interconnected systems.

    This helps you unlock significantly greater customer value and reveals where you can really disrupt both industry and market norms. This is the game-changing step.

    Cross cutting skills:

    SEIZING + SCALING + TRANSFORMING | Biomimicry design. Systems design. Circular design. Operating service mapping.

  • design-led

    We map your Marketing Mix in a regenerative value-contributing way, with a different set of ‘Ps’, to shift your Marketing efforts from costly, noisy, push comms to low-cost, high cut-through, pull attraction-led initiatives.

    Using Life’s Principles to map and align, we unpack the hallmarks of brand authenticity and how to flow that seamlessly into your positioning and communications. This helps you build brand legacy and market cut through.

    Cross cutting skills:

    TRANSFORMING | Brand positioning and brand authenticity thinking. Regenerative marketing mix mapping.

  • design + define

    We map your Monetization in a structured way to better convert value from equitable value exchanges without the high-risk duplicity of bait and hook tactics, locked in subscriptions or broker-in-the-middle margin maximization.

    We unpack all the layers of value you’ve created, to reveal how to create more, and more regenerative, revenue streams and identify where you can can profit in multiples.

    Cross cutting skills:

    TRANSFORMING | Revenue modularity thinking and revenue stream mapping.

  • define + deploy

    We pull everything together to give you a summary go-to plan that you can execute.

    We distill the future business blueprint you've created and we then backcast back to where you are currently, to identify the key stages of what you need to do, and when, to get from here to there.

    Cross-cutting skills:

    TRANSFORMING | Backcasting.

HOW YOU WILL LEARN

  • Weekly 90 minute online live group session, on Zoom, with Melissa.

  • A further 30 minute after left open for Q&A and group conversation.

  • Weekly exercises to complete during the week (optional)

  • Slide deck workbook with principles, tools and case studies

  • 1 individual coaching session with Melissa, timed to suit you

FAQs

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  • This course is designed to be as accessible as possible. No prior knowledge is required.

  • We offer a 25% discount for:

    • Not for Profits

    • Self Employed

    • Regenerative Impact players

    • Public sector

  • Yes!

    We offer scholarships to cover 50% of course fees, for those who fall into the following:

    • are Māori, Pacific Peoples, First Peoples, or First Nations indigenous peoples

    • are a refugee or displaced person

    • are over 65, or under 20 years of age

    • students, between jobs, not employed, or financially distressed

    • pre-revenue start-ups

    To be considered for the scholarship, please email us at hello@tensegrity.bio and we'll review and come back to you within 2 working days.

  • The time commitment for this course is 2-4 hours per week. The only fixed part is our weekly live sessions on Fridays. You have optional self-paced exercises to do during the week, to help cement the week's learnings.

  • Life happens. We get it. Firstly, no stress as we record all live sessions, and share them after every session. But we do cap non-attendance to 2. This helps ensure the live group sessions maintain group dynamics. What you contribute to the group is just as important as what you get out of them (yup, it's one of Nature's principles).

  • Yes, we do offer, and have run, this course in-house. The benefit of in-house is we can customize it to suit your needs. Please email Melissa directly on melissa@tensegrity.bio and we can create something that's right for you.

welcome to the bright side