Reflections on using the Doughnut for Biz Tool

When I first encountered Kate Raworth's work, a lightbulb went off. I realised I had already instinctively spent several years embedding regenerative and distributive approaches into start-up businesses, product design processes and my lifestyle. At the time, I lacked the language to articulate these instincts, relying instead on an innate sense of what felt right and a sensitivity to systems that felt fundamentally unnatural to me.

At that point, my journey appeared to centre on a specialisation in "Circular Economics" and applying "design thinking" to business models and product development. I believed I was heading in the right direction—but it never ran deep enough to satisfy.

That changed when I began questioning the "economics" of it all—when I started surfing the systems of the meta-crisis. Kate's book became one of the proverbial final nails in the coffin of industrious, reductionist thinking.

This shift led me to start working for myself—the only way I could envision throwing the conventional “business-as-usual” restraints out the window. It was the space I needed to truly explore—and help others explore—economic models and worldviews beyond the dominant paradigms that had otherwise held me back. These paradigms, designed by people who looked like me and were allegedly built for me, always felt misaligned. While others around me seemed content with their manufactured reality, I found myself profoundly unsettled. 

Fast-forward, and I’m still deep into that journey.

The Doughnut for Business tool has provided a framework and vocabulary to ground these instincts. It meets people where they are while holding space for exploration. It has validated many of my own assumptions without commodifying, owning, or standardising them—qualities I hope the tool continues to prioritise, ensuring its regenerative and distributive principles remain intact.

In many ways, it has given me the confidence to experiment and discover. It helped me realise I had been painstakingly applying regenerative thinking in the wrong environments. Now, I’ve learned to hold space for the right environments to emerge instead of chasing them, adopting a place-based approach to business and human-scale impact.

I’ll explore this more in a future article, but for today, this is about the genius I personally see in the Doughnut for Business tool—thoughts sparked by questions raised at yesterday's practitioners' meet.

I hope you enjoy...

A Tool For 'Engagement'

What sets this tool/workshop apart is how its flexibility fosters diversity and abundance. Practitioners and participants interpret it through their own unique lenses, creating a variety of approaches that collectively strengthen its systemic impact—something that DEAL doesn't impose or regulate but rather holds space for, much like a living system would.

The Doughnut resists reductionism, asking more questions than it answers, focusing not on linear goals but shifting underlying conditions. Linear goals and siloed outcomes have, after all, led us to the breakdown of relationships we now seek to shift and heal. Regenerative futures depend on nurturing the principles and relationships that create life-enhancing systems—not rigid outcomes or prescriptive standards that commodify, deplete, and suppress them.

This adaptability is central to the tool's brilliance. The workshops aren't about creating "Doughnut businesses" or adhering to a fixed framework. Instead, the Doughnut offers a vision and a starting point—a kind of permission to rethink business beyond conventional paradigms. It provides a way to begin making sense of the poly-crises we are entangled in, encouraging exploration and open-ended inquiry rather than rigid solutions. Yet anyone can facilitate; you don't need to be a buisness guru, economist or climate scientist.    

A space that asks both practitioners and participants to leave behind the reductionist worldview we are so accustomed to and adopt a more holistic and creative mode of operating from within...  

A Space for Facilitators to Learn

Here’s the twist: I think these workshops may be as much for the facilitators as for the participants. After all, we—those who sought out the training and immersed ourselves in the context—are the most likely to engage with Doughnut Economics in business. Teaching others only deepens one’s own understanding, allowing facilitators to live with the questions of regenerative and distributive dynamics—rinsed and repeated.

I’ve come to believe we can’t effectively heal the depleting systems around us until we start healing our relationship with ourselves and those systems. These tools challenge us, as practitioners, to put new muscles into practice—not by consulting/consuming (giving answers) but by holding space for new conditions to emerge, shaping new outcomes, and even a new discipline altogether—sensemaking, stewarding, healing, grieving, unlearning, playing creatively, and thinking critically. Yet, we must arrive at these understandings through our own experiences; they cannot be told/forced but must be found for ourselves. I believe DEAL provides us with the 'safe space' to make sense of this journey, cutting through the noise and guiding us toward meaningful discovery—because that is where we will find the 'safe operating space for humanity within planetary limits.'

In this sense, I feel that “the participants” might be a “red herring.” The true magic lies in how the tool encourages facilitators to immerse themselves in inquiry rather than seeking definitive answers for their guests. The participants provide the audience to explore these questions, creating an overlap in curiosity that, in turn, invites them to become facilitators themselves. 

But it’s not just the facilitators who benefit from this approach. The participants, too, find value in this process. As they dive into the inquiry, they, too, become curious. They, too, wish to hold space—not just for others but for themselves—so they can break free from the constraints of conventional models, the breakdowns within the business status quo, and the unnatural base principles that have left a longing for something deeper. It’s an invitation to reclaim a more human way of being, one that is in harmony with how life actually works. They begin to see that the goal is not to suppress ourselves into unnatural boxes or mechanistic systems, but to embrace our full, living potential.

This design, centred on questions rather than solutions, reflects the very ethos of regeneration. The tool doesn’t aim to arrive at a final outcome. Its purpose is to hold space for the journey itself, allowing ongoing discovery and the abundance that naturally arises in such spaces. It’s about creating the conditions for transformation—both for individuals and for the systems they inhabit.

A Practice, Not a Product

The Doughnut for Biz tool embodies its principles in every sense. It fosters relational, non-commoditised value, and its open-source nature invites reciprocity while centring around the practice of healing broken systemic relationships. Resisting commodification challenges practitioners to integrate its ethos into their work organically. It’s not about monetising a framework but about using it as a container to rethink and co-create regenerative systems that promote interdependence and collective well-being.

A Response to the Meta-Crisis—Not Its Symptoms

After all, The Doughnut is more than just a framework—it’s a profound response to the systemic crises of our time: climate breakdown, social inequities, and more. It doesn’t pretend to offer quick solutions. Instead, it encourages us to confront and transform the extractive conditions underpinning these crises—whether they stem from consumerism, waste, colonialism, supremacy, patriarchy, or the pursuit of one hegemonic worldview.

This isn’t about “doing good” for its own sake. It’s about creating new conditions within business and economics that lead to new outcomes—an evolutionary shift required for humanity to thrive within planetary boundaries. Doughnut Economics helps us see why current models are becoming obsolete and provides a starting point for making sense of this systemic unravelling.

DEAL challenges us to think beyond isolated symptoms and focus on the root causes of the breakdowns in our social, economic, and environmental systems. We can’t 'trick', 'persuade', or 'nudge' people unwilling to enter the Doughnut—we can only hold space for them to be curious, to dip a toe in the water and see how it feels, not for us, not for the good of humanity, but for the realisation that they are an interconnected part of everything else.

The Genius of the Doughnut

I think the Doughnut’s true genius lies in how it embodies the principles it advocates: diversity, reciprocity, and stewarding regenerative (healing) relationships. It’s not a product to be sold or a formula to follow. It’s a practice—a way of being that invites us to reimagine and co-create systems that sustain life rather than commodify and deplete it.

As we transition from an era of breakthroughs to breakdowns, the Doughnut offers a crucial reminder: regeneration begins not with solutions but with a reawakening of imagination and relationships. It doesn’t operate within the traditional bounds of mainstream supply and demand; it’s far deeper than that. This is about resilience in the face of profound transformation—applying our collective capabilities to heal and restore the degenerative relationships that underpin mainstream economics and transcend them entirely. It’s a call to reimagine not just our businesses but the very systems that govern our lives, allowing us to thrive within the limits of our planet - once more.

A Pathway for Reflection and Systemic Change

The Doughnut for Business tool inspires profound reflection. It underscores the systemic shift required to move from extractive models to regenerative ones. I do not believe its purpose is to dictate outcomes but to hold space for the journey—encouraging us to embrace complexity, nurture relationships, and create the conditions for life to thrive. 

What excites me most is that it doesn’t ask facilitators to figure out how to package Doughnut for Business or commoditise the workshops on behalf of DEAL. Instead, it challenges us to be deeply creative. It calls on us to find ways to bring the core regenerative and distributive principles into the work we do—not by selling the Doughnut but by embracing the sense-making journey it inspires.

It invites us to step outside conventional expectations—beyond creating a “business case” or asking people to “buy-in.” Instead, it asks us to embody a new way of operating, one that rejects preconceived notions of value delivery in favour of living principles that transcend the systems we seek to transform. This is the real magic: the Doughnut doesn’t just shift what we do—it challenges us to rethink how and why we do it, opening a pathway to co-create the regenerative futures we all hope to see - together. It brings us back to reciprocity. 

For me, DEAL, in all its colours, stands as living proof of the timeless premise: "Build it, and they will come." Its tools could never be a service 'add-on' or a complimentary 'product'; instead, they serve as spaces to hold, questions to live, and principles yet to be embodied. For some, witnessing this in action is what it takes to believe—even without fully understanding it. This is what makes DEAL so unique, especially in a world still anchored to a collapsing era of depletion. It serves as a ceremony—a 'way of remembering'—rather than a crib sheet, leading by example and helping us trust that if we walk the walk, the rest will follow. 

With that, I will pass on this story for you to do as you please.

With love and reciprocity,

Jamie Prow