Regenerative Business Models for Local Production Systems

Juliana S. Carvalho

Regenerative Business Models for Local Production Systems

Author(s)	Dr. Juliana S. Carvalho
Country	United States
Abstract	The growing interest in localized and distributed production has renewed attention to the economic, environmental, and social consequences of producing goods closer to the communities in which they are consumed. Yet localization alone does not guarantee sustainability. A production system may shorten physical supply chains while continuing to depend on virgin materials, fossil energy, disposable product architectures, weak labor arrangements, and extractive patterns of value capture. This study develops a regenerative business-model perspective for local production systems by integrating scholarship on sustainable business models, circular economy, distributed manufacturing, resource-loop strategies, and regenerative economic principles. The proposed perspective distinguishes conventional localization from genuinely regenerative production by examining whether an enterprise restores productive capacities, circulates materials at high value, strengthens ecological conditions, builds community capabilities, and retains a meaningful share of economic value within the locality.Because no primary field dataset was supplied, the empirical component is explicitly structured as a reproducible simulation rather than presented as completed field research. Twenty-four hypothetical local production units are classified into four analytical archetypes: Conventional Local, Efficiency-Led Local, Circular Local, and Regenerative Local. A Regenerative Integration Score is simulated alongside Local Value Retention to demonstrate how a future empirical study could operationalize the framework. The simulated results show progressively higher regenerative-integration scores across the four archetypes and an illustrative positive relationship between regenerative integration and local value retention. The simulated Pearson correlation is r = 0.89, with approximately 79.5% of modeled variation in local value retention associated with variation in the regenerative-integration measure. These values are analytical demonstrations and must not be interpreted as observed real-world effects.The study contributes a practical distinction between merely producing locally and organizing production regeneratively. It argues that regenerative local production requires business models that connect material circularity, ecological renewal, distributed capabilities, community participation, repair and reuse systems, resilient sourcing, and locally anchored value distribution. The framework offers a foundation for future comparative case studies, surveys, life-cycle assessments, and longitudinal investigations of place-based production systems.
Keywords	: regenerative business models; local production; distributed manufacturing; circular economy; sustainable business-model innovation; local value retention; resource loops; community resilience
Field	Engineering
Published In	Volume 5, Issue 3, May-June 2024
Published On	2024-06-25

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American Journal of Advanced Multidisciplinary Innovation and Research

A Widely Indexed Open Access Peer Reviewed Multidisciplinary Bi-monthly Scholarly International Journal

Regenerative Business Models for Local Production Systems

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