24 February 2026
In a first article, I argued, in light of new global trends – with a focus on the Mediterranean region-, that resilience has become an insufficient conceptual basis to drive policies, business activities, cooperation and individual actions. I crafted the concept of resnovation, combining resistance and innovation in support of resilience. The second blog of this series unpacked the triangular and fruitful interdependence between resilience, resistance and innovation, at the core of resnovation. This third blog explores ways to use the concept as a guide for resnovative practices in business, tech, policies, non-profit and individual actions.
As a departure point for our design testing journey, the reader could pick-up a simple concrete familiar example in these realms of life and see if and how what follows resonates with one’s practice. The Resnovation Hub, functioning as a transdisciplinary design thinking and learning digital lab, will follow-up on this third blog post, and collaboratively unpack resnovative practices in real-life experiences shared by contributors.
The 6 roots of resnovative practice
I would suggest grounding resnovative practice in six key intertwined sets of values (themselves open to intercultural dialogue and transformations) most of which originate from dominating narratives on the perceived Golden Ages of various Empires that successively ruled the Mediterranean (though other examples in the world matching these values could be referred to), i.e. periods in history that witnessed:
- The development of knowledge, science and technology associated with the cultivation of wisdom in dialogue with a variety of schools of thoughts from all continents. In today’s world, this would consist of i) pursuing wise (i.e. balanced, cautious and informed) recourse to (sober) technology (including frugal AI) and science ii) inventing new sustainable and fair solutions to humanity’s existential challenges, in particular climate change and biodiversity loss.
- The establishment of reasonable and effective legal and normative systems resulting in a certain perception of social justice by members of a given society;
- The development of ethical codes and norms based on the acceptance, recognition and promotion of diversity (biological, cultural, religious, inter alia) ;
- A conducive context for win-win trade and commercial exchanges across geographical areas and between various ethnic, religious and racial groups;
- The emergence of aesthetical references and creative techniques leading to the existence of specific artistic styles and beauty standards. In other words, how new aesthetics can emerge from resnovative practices.
- Resistance as active pushback against violence and threats to peaceful coexistence, for which numerous narratives and sources can be traced.
In reference to these historically rooted features, we have added, as presented in blog #2, the collective acknowledgement of a loss of commons, i.e. the awareness that the six above-mentioned components of a desirable and peaceful society are themselves at risk.
With these references in mind, resnovation practitioners are equipped to assess a given situation and adjust the course of their action by following resnovative dos and don’ts.
Resnovation in business: 5 directions to value creation
Applying resnovation in business is about developing innovative transformative dynamics in five areas of work.
Area 1: Resnovative context and threats assessment
Classic assessments usually analyse the context of work with a variety of models or methods. I recently came across the EFC approach (unveiling the real purpose of work distinct from formally prescribed tasks and the value of cooperation) that I found particularly enlightening. There are probably other different valuable methods to apply on the evolution of work. With the resnovative approach, any work context analysis will incorporate the notion of commons’ loss, an assessment of the degree of (physical or symbolic) violence at play, and the presence (or absence) of social and technological innovative practices.
Area 2: Resnovative ideation
In dominating economic models, new business projects originate from market observation, gaps identification in customer needs, experiments as well as ideation processes. Based on resnovative threats assessments, resnovative ideation will systematically combine research-based innovative inputs answering “customer needs” as purposeful motivations in resistance to various forms of violence, rights violations and ecological crises.
Area 3: Resnovative value creation
Resnovative value creation is grounded in alternative exchange and valuation innovations outside monetisation and short-term cost-cutting strategies. In other words, resnovative value creation is about generating and recognising various forms of value that is not just money, while articulating innovation with resistance to rights violations and multidimensional threats.
Area 4: Resnovative return on investment
As a consequence, resnovative entrepreneurs will be those able to develop resistant, purposeful, valuable and attractive projects beyond mere financial return on investment. Resnovative business can potentially generate profit indirectly and in the long run. In that case, indirect and long term return on investment will be underlined in value propositions. What resnovative projects target first is the value of impactful innovative resistance, as a component of value creation.
Area 5: Resnovative business models
Business models will follow innovative design methods, not necessarily matching all dominating and usual risk assessment and bankability criteria. Resnovative projects and business models will challenge existing definitions of bankability (echoing debates on sustainable finance) and design new models based on complex sense and impact-making.
Resnovation in tech
Resnovation in tech will operate along the same five areas of resnovative business, with emphasis on engineering and scientific models underpinning business plans and design.
The six roots of resnovative practices could be applied to tech companies’ working conditions: they should favour the invention of wisdom-focused and awareness-oriented universes rather than ones producing further alienation, trauma and shocks.
Algorithms regulation and AI regulation will be at the core of resnovative tech, which will acknowledge the loss of values and hopes initially borne by the first generation of internet developers and promoters. Resnovative capital could will be invested in researching common losses generated by destructive and violent tech to propose innovative resistant solutions.
On the bright side, resnovative tech will invest in sober AI and environmentally aware applications to provide solutions to global and societal challenges through the cultivation of enriching commons, beyond and in alternative to extractive capitalism. Applications in the care sectors, in education, health, infrastructures services responding to basic needs appear as obvious priorities. Examples of those are already numerous and will be analysed and discussed in the Resnovation Hub.
Resnovative tech should also be able to help think about non-violent societies pursuing social justice between groups opting for de-growth, consumption slowdown for global commons, and those still preferring extractive capitalist consumerism. Resnovative tech for instance could help design zoning policies to develop specific economic and societal models protected from threatening economic and technological interference and violence (although they would not escape climate induced threats). In a way, this is already happening at the level of counties or cities that are developing alternative resnovation-like transition initiatives.
As endangered marine life calls for extensions of marine protected areas, as linguistic justice promoters have argued for regulations to protected minority languages on a given territory, the resnovation approach implies the development of protected areas in a variety of purposefully defined spaces. Effective, efficient management and governance of boundaries between protected and unprotected lands and spaces will thereby emerge as new fields of tech exploration, research, and governance innovation.
Non-profit and Individual actions
By extension, this resnovative approach could be applied to non-profit activities and individual actions. In those cases, innovative resistance is about designing and managing areas (including legal protection) and contexts that are conducive to nonprofit and non-violent value creation and soberly innovative activities, in active resistance to brutal and destructive modes of production and decisions.
At the individual level, resnovation will consist in using innovations to actively resist external (and self) aggression and shape one’s personal and internal protected (physical, virtual and legal) areas, in connection with one’s business, non-profit and policy engagement.
Resnovative teams
Last but not least, for resnovation to be applied, resnovative teams or taskforces will need to be composed! This will imply resnovative practice in human resources management : out-of-the box recruitment, resnovative team-building decisions, specific training on resnovation values and models, cross-generational talent promotion, skills diversity, transdisciplinary methods and flexibility to (unpleasant yet disruptive) surprises.
Debates on resnovation practices and initiatives alike will be developed further in future blog posts as well as in the piloting Resnovation Hub, in dialogue with professionals, colleagues and friends operating in business, tech, policies, non-profit, care, and cultural sectors. Some facets of resnovation may be explored in future blog posts and contributions on underlooked topics such as resnovative finance, resnovation and non profit, resnovation and design, etc.