Moving to a regenerative economy will require much innovation and investment in lots of infrastructure. One area of particular importance will be the definitions, data, and algorithms that help us identify "quality". How do we know if we are making progress? How do we prioritize and where should we focus attention? How can we tell "good" initiatives from "bad" or at least "better" from "worse"?
As we become more sophisticated we'll want widely agreed upon, widely available, timely, accurate, data sources - dashboards - to help monitor progress and identify opportunities and resources that will continue to drive improvement. Certainly we'll debate definitions, accuracy, data sources and more - that is a necessary part of the maturation process.
Fortunately, efforts are already underway. One of my favorites is WRI's Global Forest Watch which combines a variety of data sets, updating as often as daily, to describe both the current state of the world's forests as well as how they are changing over time. GFW is an example of a resource enabled by modern technology - satellite data shared freely by the government combined with distributed computing power leads to results in hours that, not long ago, would have taken decades to process, if they were possible at all.
And the debate over data and metrics is also well underway. One of the most prominent venues for this debate over the next few years, will be around the UN's sustainable development goals. How well these goals represent regenerative thinking can slow or accelerate this movement.
Improvement: Last week I credited the term "The Regenerates" to Alexander Melck and his film "The Regenerates" (45'). Turns out it had been used as a company name by Regenesis long before. My bad & thanks for the corrections!
Still hope you will be a regenerate and join the wave!