ABSTRACT
This chapter compares the emerging renaissance in human consciousness, playing out in companies that mimic life, to the earlier European Renaissance of the 14th–17th centuries. Moved by a conscious acceptance of our interdependence with the rest of life, the emerging new worldview is both holistic and ecocentric. Otto Scharmer’s process of engagement aims to catalyze and accelerate the emerging global renaissance from egocentric capitalism toward a new ecocentric system of stewarding the shared ecological and social commons that is the ultimate source of life and profit. Companies that mimic life use Nature as a model because it is the most resilient and self-energizing system. With its exceptionally diverse and diffuse base of know ledge, Nature has survived over billions of years. By adopting this standard, ecocentric models go beyond challenging corporate and political hierarchies. Like “cracking the code of life” in 1968, the emerging renaissance of living asset stewardship has opened vast new vistas of human awareness and innovation.
