The future of business may have already happened.
Future Origins is an international think tank studying the business models that made civilizations prosper — applying that regenerative thinking to the economy we build today. Our founding case study is the Phoenicians: three thousand years ago they turned Mediterranean trade culture into the first true network economy, built on trust and connection rather than conquest.
To study, promote, and accelerate business models that generate economic, social, and environmental prosperity — through collaboration, trust, and the deliberate building of community.
Future Origins is a global movement, a think tank, and a business network. It is not an institute, a school, or a university: no degrees, no campus — a working community of people putting regenerative thinking into practice.
Two ways to build power.
Most economic history is written as a history of conquest. The Phoenicians offer a different case: a civilization that never held an empire, yet shaped the Mediterranean for a thousand years — through ports, alphabets, and agreements, not armies. We treat that as a working model, not a museum piece.
Value through control
- Growth by territory and conquest
- Value extracted from the periphery to the centre
- Relationships secured by force or dependency
- Success measured in what is taken
Value through connection
- Growth by network and neutral trading ports
- Value created and shared across trading partners
- Relationships secured by trust and repeat exchange
- Success measured in what is regenerated
The Phoenicians are the first chapter in a much longer archive of civilizations that built prosperity without extraction.
Six principles from the first network economy.
The framework we use across our research, our insights, and our partner network — regenerative thinking translated from ancient trade practice into contemporary management.
Neutral ports
Phoenician cities traded as neutral hubs, not colonizers. Applied today: build platforms and ecosystems that create value for every partner who joins, not just the convener.
Trust as infrastructure
Long-distance trade only works if your word travels faster than you do. Applied today: reputation and reliability are treated as capital, not as marketing.
Shared language
The Phoenician alphabet spread because it made exchange easier for everyone who used it. Applied today: open standards and shared knowledge outcompete closed systems.
Distributed network
No single city held the whole system — resilience came from many connected ports. Applied today: durable organizations are built as networks, not hierarchies.
Long-cycle thinking
Trade routes were built to outlast a single voyage or a single ruler. Applied today: regenerative business plans in decades, not quarters.
Prosperity of place
A Phoenician port's success was tied to the wealth of the communities around it. Applied today: the health of your territory is a performance metric.
Evidence for a different way of building value.
Peer-reviewed papers, original case studies, and open frameworks that translate regenerative thinking into tools boards and founders can actually use.
StoriesIdeas from the network, for the network.
Essays, interviews, and a running conversation with the leaders, scholars, and builders putting regenerative thinking into practice.
Enrico Foglia
A mechanical engineer by training and a marketing and sustainability practitioner by trade, Enrico Foglia built his career inside large international organizations — including General Motors, P&G, Bristol Myers Squibb and Leonardo — before turning to regenerative business full time.
Today he is Global Strategy Director at BIP.Verco and an adjunct professor at Luiss University.
With Philip Kotler and Christian Sarkar he co-founded the Regenerative Marketing Institute and wrote the first manifesto of regenerative thinking: Regeneration – The Future of Community in a Permacrisis World.
Future Origins grew out of a simple observation, formed over these years of work: the models we call new — networks, ecosystems, shared value, circular models — were the operating system of civilizations that prospered for centuries without extraction.
Regenerative thinking is a business strategy, not an ecological metaphor.
— The founding idea
Trade routes were never built alone.
Future Origins is a standing network of companies, universities, and individual leaders committed to building an economy on trust, connection, and shared prosperity.